Tribunal strikes out petition against Mark
The R
e-run Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Makurdi Thursday struck out the petition of the All Progres-sives Congress, APC candidate Daniel Onjeh for being filed out of time.
e-run Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Makurdi Thursday struck out the petition of the All Progres-sives Congress, APC candidate Daniel Onjeh for being filed out of time.The tribunal held that the petition was filed out of the stipulated 21 days as enshrined in the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In her ruling, Justice Chinyere Gloria Anulube described the petition as ‘defective and incurably bad’ main-taining that the tribunal lack the jurisdiction to entertain the suit.
She held that provision of the interpretation Act, the electoral, Act Practice Direction as well as the constitu-tion of the Federal Republic, the time for filing an election petition should include the day of declaration of result of the election.
While relying on the Supreme Court decision in Okechukwu and INEC, the tribunal also, held that since the re-run itself was predicated upon the order of Appeal Court, ‘this tribunal cannot shy away from a superior court pronouncement’.
“We hold that all pending applications before the court having been overtaken by event is thereby struck out,” she stated.
Responding to the ruling, counsel to Sen Mark Ken Ikone, SAN said Justice was well served, averring that the petition is just a waste of time as it is incompetent.
On his part, Special Assistant to Sen David Mark on Media/Benue Liaison, Dr Adakole Elijah hailed the de-cision of the tribunal saying that the ruling was a classical manifestation of the revalidation of the mandate given to the former Senate President.
Elijah said: “We defeated APC in March 2015, the APC and its candidate went to court and got the victory nullified and a re-run was ordered, we went back to the polls and came back victorious and that victory has today been re-affirmed by the tribunal.”