{"id":238445,"date":"2025-12-21T16:57:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T16:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.name.ng\/news\/just-in-akpabio-escalates-dispute-with-senator-natasha-to-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T16:57:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T16:57:35","slug":"just-in-akpabio-escalates-dispute-with-senator-natasha-to-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/just-in-akpabio-escalates-dispute-with-senator-natasha-to-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"JUST IN: Akpabio escalates dispute with Senator Natasha to Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p data-start=\"78\" data-end=\"221\"><span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio<\/span><\/span>, has taken his dispute with Senator <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan<\/span><\/span> to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"223\" data-end=\"402\">Akpabio is seeking to overturn a ruling of the Court of Appeal, Abuja division, which struck out his brief of argument in an appeal arising from the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"404\" data-end=\"573\">Sources in Abuja said the Senate President\u2019s legal team approached the apex court after the appeal court held that his brief was fundamentally defective and incompetent.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"575\" data-end=\"682\">The appellate court said the brief failed to comply with mandatory provisions of the court of appeal rules.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"684\" data-end=\"871\">The court faulted the brief for procedural violations, including unauthorised font size and line spacing, exceeding the 35-page limit, and failure to seek leave to regularise the defects.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"873\" data-end=\"1016\">The Appeal Court ruled that the infractions were not minor technical lapses but substantive breaches that went to the competence of the appeal.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1018\" data-end=\"1133\">In his notice of appeal, Akpabio argued that the Court of Appeal breached his constitutional right to fair hearing.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1135\" data-end=\"1284\">He said the lower court erred by refusing to grant him leave to correct the defective brief or permit him to re-file within or beyond the page limit.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1286\" data-end=\"1452\">Akpabio also contended that the court failed to treat parties equally, alleging that Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s brief was allowed despite non-compliance with formatting rules.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1454\" data-end=\"1544\">The Senate President said the refusal to grant leave resulted in a miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1546\" data-end=\"1716\">The legal battle has fuelled speculation about political undertones, with some observers describing the dispute as a struggle for authority and control within the Senate.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2242\" data-end=\"2382\">Meanwhile, Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s legal team said it is confident in the judiciary and described the Supreme Court appeal as a last-ditch effort.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has taken his dispute with Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan to the Supreme Court. Akpabio is seeking to overturn a ruling of the Court of Appeal, Abuja division, which struck out his brief of argument in an appeal arising from the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan. Sources in Abuja said the Senate President\u2019s legal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":238446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Senator-Natasha-Akpoti-Uduaghan-and-Akpabio.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abiaradiostations.com.ng\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}