Five governors who defected from the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, to the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, will today begin the legal battle to avert their removal from offices at the Federal High Court, Abuja.

Their case comes up barely a week after 37 members of the House of Representatives who decamped to the APC from the PDP were ordered to vacate their seats by Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja. The judge also stopped the APC lawmakers from effecting any leadership change in the House.

Justice Ademola said the lawmakers “no longer had any business, morally and legally, to stay in the House of Representatives.”

But today, the court will hear the applications filed by the five governors challenging the validity of the hearing notices served on them by the PDP.

The court will also hear all pending applications, especially the one where the governors challenged services on their liaison offices in Abuja by the ruling party.

The embattled governors who were summoned to appear before the court through the services are:  Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano) and Abdulfatai Ahmed (Kwara).

Justice Gabriel Kolawole fixed today to hear the governors’ motion and the application filed by the PDP to regularise its service.

The governors’ grouse is that the PDP did not serve the hearing notices at the address stipulated in the order which directed them to appear before the court.

However, the PDP explained that the defected governors’ new political party, the APC, had relocated from the address mentioned in the court order.

The confusion over the address of the national secretariat of the APC became a major issue in the suit after the governors and their lawyers failed to appear before the court when proceedings in the suit commenced on January 27, 2014.

Following the governors’ absence, Justice Kolawole fixed today for hearing and ordered that a hearing notice be served on them.

The judge directed that the hearing notice be pasted at the national secretariat of the APC as a means of substituted service on the governors, in addition to its advertisement in two national dailies.

Instead of turning up to respond to the suit filed by PDP, as ordered by the court, their lawyers appeared in court on February 6, 2014 to challenge the service of the hearing notice.

They pointed out that, while the order issued by the court for service of the hearing notice on their clients indicated No. 6 Guinea Bissau Street, Wuse Zone 6 as the address of the APC national secretariat, the service was done at a different address – No. 40 Blantyre Street in Wuse 2.

The PDP lawyer, Alex Izinyon, SAN, explained that the court bailiff, who executed the service, called at APC’s official address and found the area deserted.