Dino Melaye suffers major setback as appeal court rules Inec has the authority to recall him

KOGI West's Senator Dino Melaye still faces the prospect of being recalled from the senate after the Court of Appeal in Abuja dismissed an appeal he filed asking that the recall process be truncated with immediate effect.

Senator Melaye is facing the threat of being recalled by his constituents after several of his political opponents began collecting signatures, which would mandate the Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec), to recall him. Already a federal high court had ruled in favour of Senator Melaye but the appeal court has confirmed that  Inec has the power to commence a recall process without first referring to the senator.

In a judgment earlier today, a three-man panel of the appeal court held that the federal high court lacked the jurisdiction to have heard Senator Melaye’s suit querying the recall process by Inec. Shortly after Inec released its order of procedure for Senator Melaye’s recall process late last year, Justice John Tsoho of the federal high court granted an ex-parte order in favour of the senator stopping the agency from carrying through the process.

Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, who eventually determined the fundamental rights suit by Senator Melaye, in which he claimed to have been denied fair hearing, held that Inec could conduct the recall process without hearing from him. He, however, ordered Inec to provide Senator Melaye with the petition for his recall written by some electorate in his Kogi West Senatorial Constituency to enable him familiarise himself with issues raised against him in the petition.

Justice T O Awotoye, who read the lead judgment of the court of appeal, said the federal high court ought not to have heard Senator Melaye’s fundamental rights suit in the first place, because there was no cause of action. According to the appeal court, the 90 days required for the recall process has not lapsed in the Melaye case.