The appeal court has suspended the hearing of an appeal by Adams Oshiomhole against the judgment of a federal high court in Abuja suspending him as the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Herald gathered that Oshiomhole was at the court in company with a former governorship aspirant of the APC in Edo State, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, among others, for the hearing.
A panel of three Justices led by Justice Stephen Adah had been scheduled to hear the case today Monday, March 16 but an official of the court announced to those attending the scheduled hearing that Oshiomhole’s appeal has been postponed.
Earlier, The Herald reported that Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the APC, said those plotting to remove Adams Oshiomhole, as national chairman of the ruling party, are distracting President Muhammadu Buhari.
The APC leader, in a statement he personally signed on Sunday, said the ideas of such persons should be quarantined.
The statement read: “In a broader context, those afflicted with the 2023 virus do a grave disservice to President Buhari and his administration. They should be trying their best to help the president. Instead of seeing President Buhari as our present leader and commander-in-chief, their sole contemplation is upon his eventual exit.
“Yet, not even a full year has passed since his second inaugural. How can they be committed to helping him realise his mandate when the fullness of their gaze is affixed to seizing this very mandate for themselves?
“While Corona has been presently contained in Nigeria, we must be alert to another sickness that seems rampant within a certain segment of society. That sickness is old Ambition-virus 2023. This illness afflicts many in the political class along with their allies in the media.
The plotters launched their attack solely because they perceive the chairman as an obstacle to their 2023 ambitions. People went to court knowing full well the party constitution prohibits such action because these people had not yet exhausted all internal disciplinary procedures.
“We even had a national deputy secretary improperly call for a NEC meeting on the basis that he believed himself the acting national chairman.
“Clearly, this man would not have summoned the temerity to make such a move had he not been instigated by powerful individuals who he thought would reward or, at least, protect him for committing the wrongful act.”