The presiding judge, Justice B. O. Quadri, ruled on Tuesday that the case, marked FHC/YNG/CS/114/2023, was statute barred and the court, in effect, lacked the jurisdiction to entertain it.
Johnson, an APC member, who contested and lost the APC governorship primary in the state in April, had filed the suit in which she alleged improper conduct of the primary election, and claimed that the party’s deputy governorship candidate, Joshua Maciver, was not qualified to be on the ballot.
Maciver is the running mate to Timipre Sylva, the APC governorship candidate.
She alleged that Maciver had been convicted by a court before and that he lied on oath in his nomination forms with the Independent National Electoral Commission regarding his conviction status.
But Justice Quadri held that the suit against Maciver was statute-barred, having been filed outside the statutory 14 days on the occurrence of the matter for which Johnson was suing.
The state APC said the ruling effectively had cleared the last hurdle before the party ahead of Saturday’s governorship polls.
The state APC Publicity Secretary, Mr Doifie Buokoribo, said, in a statement, “The case brought against our Deputy Governorship candidate by surrogates of those who have no confidence in the free choice of Bayelsa people through the ballot box and think they can distract the people’s choice has yet again failed.
“Like the previous attempts, this one, too, has failed to stop us.
“We thank Bayelsa people for their confidence in APC expressed by their overwhelming support throughout the case. Bayelsa has won again.”
