The All Progressives Congress has told the Independent National Electoral Commission to recognise Wasiu Sanni as its candidate seeking to represent the Lagos Island Constituency 1 in the Lagos State House of Assembly.

Sanni had, in a suit marked FHC/L/CS/34/15, accused the APC of transferring his mandate to Hakeem Masha, who polled 70 votes, in an election where Sanni claimed to have won with 186 votes.

Sanni, who is a former Executive Chairman of the Lagos Island Local Government Area, had approached Justice Ibraheem Buba of a Federal High Court in Lagos seeking an order restoring his allegedly stolen mandate.

He urged Buba to declare that the alleged substitution of his name in the list forwarded to INEC with that of Masha, ran afoul of the provisions of sections 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 of the Electoral Act, 2010.

But the APC, in a letter dated January 15 and signed by its National Chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun and Secretary, Mai Mala Buni, urged INEC to reinstate Sanni on its list.

The letter with the reference number: APC/NHDQ/INEC/19/015/175 was attached to a further affidavit which the APC filed before Buba in response to Sanni’s claims.

At the resumed hearing of the case on Thursday, Masha, through his lawyer, Bonajo Badejo (SAN), brought an application contending that the plaintiff’s processes were not properly served on him.

He also requested for time to respond to the plaintiff’s counter-affidavit to his application challenging service.

But the applicant’s lawyer, Wahab Shittu, expressed the frustration that the matter was dragging at the instance of the defendants.

Wahab complained that despite the fact that the matter was adjourned for almost a week, the second defendant (Masha) did not serve his client until Wednesday evening.

He said, “My Lord, as a mark of diligence, we filed our counter-affidavit this morning to the said application which was served on us about 5pm yesterday. We are indeed ready to come back tomorrow for the matter to be heard.”

But Buba said it would be in the interest of justice to give the defendants time to respond, but assured that the matter would be heard in time.

He subsequently adjourned till February 26, 2015 for definite hearing of all the filed processes.