The National Assembly Elections Petition Tribunal in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, yesterday turned down the request of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Senator-elect in the Akwa Ibom North West senatorial district, Chris Ekpeneyong, to vacate the petition of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, on the March 23, 2019, senatorial election in the area.
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The tribunal had on April 2, 2019, granted an exparte order to Akpabio and the All Progressives Congress (APC) for inspection of materials in the custody of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
But a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the lead counsel to the PDP senator-elect, Solomon Umoh, approached the tribunal, praying it to set aside the order earlier granted Akpabio to inspect election materials used during the senatorial election in the district.
The PDP had in a counter order urged the tribunal to bar the APC and Akpabio from inspecting electoral materials used in the senatorial elections in the district.
Counsel to the PDP, Umoh, had prayed the tribunal to dismiss Akpabio’s petition in its entirety as well as set aside the petitioner’s request for inspection and forensic analysis of election materials.
He had maintained that the inspection process of the election materials has been prejudice, saying the “only grounds of obtaining an order must be by motion on notice,” which he noted the respondents failed to file.
Ruling on the PDP application, the Chairman of the tribunal, Justice W. O. Akanbi, declared that the request by the respondent for the inspection order to be reverse was an act alien to law.
The tribunal chairman agreed with counsel to Akpabio, Sunday I. Ameh SAN, that Ekpenyong and the PDP suffered no prejudice having been invited to be part of the inspection process.
According to Akanbi, the PDP counsel only succeeded in “hell-raising technicalities to waste the time of the tribunal.”
He said Akpabio’s demand for inspection of electoral materials and the tribunal order granting same are in line with the provisions of Section 151 sub-sections 1 and 2 of the Electoral Act.
The tribunal chairman, while dismissing PDP’s argument that the exparte order for the inspection does not align with the provisions of the Electoral Act, noted that any order from a court of competent jurisdiction in relation to the inspection is valid because the Electoral Act does not specify which order should be accommodated or rejected.
The tribunal also declared that PDP’s motion for an order to stop forensic analysis of the election materials was lacking in merit because any party in court is at liberty to any of its preferred method of inspection.
“Any party is at liberty to adopt any method of inspection. The parties involved in an election can choose to bring in forensic experts. The inspection can also be manually done. Even if the inspection is done with laboratory equipment, the law is okay with that,” the tribunal asserted, and likened the PDP’s action to “crying wolf where there is none.”
In an interview with journalists after the ruling, Umoh, who stood in for the petitioner’s lead counsel, Mr. Sunday Ameh SAN, said the ruling had deepened judicial practice.
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