A Federal high court in Abuja has ruled that a major importer in the country, Ifeanyinchukwu Okonkwo cannot challenge President Muhammadu Buhari on the appointment of a retired Army Colonel, Hameed Ibrahim Ali as the Customs Comptroller General.
The court held that the litigant who is an Anambra based businessman lacks locus standi to institute and maintain the court action slammed on the President to challenge the legality or otherwise of the appointment.
Ruling in a preliminary objection filed by Buhari, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba said that the litigant failed to show what he lost with the appointment than any other Nigerian.
The Judge agreed with the President that the litigant also failed to disclose any cause of action against the defendant as he was neither a customs officer or an aspirant to the office of the Comptroller General of the customs.
With a glaring failure of how the appointment dversely affected him and his business, Justice Dimgba said that the court case cannot be allowed to proceed so as not to waste the precious time of the court.
The judge terminated the case by striking it out on the ground that the plaintiff lacked locus standi to institute it.
President Muhammadu Buhari had last week objected to hearing of the legal action instituted against him by a businessman to challenge the legality or otherwise of the appointment of a retired Army Colonel, Hameed Ibrahim Ali as the Customs Comptroller General.
Buhari had asked the federal high court in Abuja to decline to entertain the suit on the ground that the litigant Mr. Ifeanyichukwu Okonkwo lacked the locus standi to institute the case against him.
In a notice of preliminary objection, the President had claimed that the plaintiff failed to disclose his locus standi to initiate and maintain the court case as constituted and conceived.
