Court grants PDP request, sacks Tonye Cole as Rivers APC gov candidate

A Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt Rivers State, has granted the request of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to disqualify Tonye Cole as the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in the state.

In a ruling delivered on Thursday, November 24, 2022, the presiding justice, Emmanuel Obile, ruled that Cole's emergence as the APC candidate didn't follow the due process.

Recall that in May, Cole had been declared the winner of the APC governorship primary election in Rivers after polling 986 votes to defeat the likes of Ojukai Flagamakere (190 votes) votes; Sukonte Davids (49 votes); Michael West (43 votes); Benald Miku (2 votes) and Magnus Abe (one vote).

However, the Rivers State chapter of the PDP later approached the court with a suit seeking to disqualify the APC governorship candidate over allegations that he was elected at the primary by unqualified delegates.

This development comes a few weeks after a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt declared all the primary elections conducted by the Rivers APC as null.

Delivering judgement in a suit filed by one George Orlu and four other persons identified as aspirants, Justice Obile ruled that the complainants, who had alleged exclusion from the primaries, were unlawfully excluded from the process.

The court also ordered that those who emerged as candidates from the primaries should not be recognised as validly-elected candidates for the APC in the state.

Pulse reports that this is a repeat of the situation the party found itself in 2019 when the apex court in Nigeria disqualified all the APC candidates in Rivers from contesting elections in the state.