The Enugu Division of the Court of Appeal yesterday reserved judgement in an appeal brought before it by the gubernatorial candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), in the Anambra State gubernatorial elections held in November last year seeking the appealate ciurt to disband the Anambra State Gubernatorial Elections Tribunal on grounds of bias.
Sen Ngige , jointly with APC, is also asking the Court of Appeal to reverse the decision of the lower panel in refusing an application filed by him through his legal team to uphold the provisions of Paragraph 12, sub-paragraph 5 of the First Scedule to the Electoral Act and the cited cases already decided by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in support of the extant provisions.
The cited section provides that all application raised in the course of hearing in an election petition shall be documented and the reply by opposing padties equally documented, while ruling shall be taken along with the hearing at the final acddress.
But by its ruling of 19th February,2014 the tribunal drew a distictiin between applications and objections seeking to strike out the entire petition for incompetence which the tribunal applied the privision, and those seeking to strike out paragraphs of the petition which the tribhnal alloed to be argued and determined instantly.
Subsequently, the Tribunal in another ruljng of 28th February, 2014 and yet another on 5th March 2014, the tribunal, while granting the application filed by Obiano,INEC and APGA struck out substantial paragraphs of the appealants petition.
Affected paragrapgs are those related to the alleged multiples voter-registration of the APGA candidate in the disputed election, and allegations malpractices against APGA, those on non-joinder of ‘APGA thugs’ as a party in the petition, as well s other paragraphs described in the ruling as ‘vague and nebulous’.
The appealants are contending that ‘this discriminatory ruling’ has complicated the hearing at the tribunal, leading to time losses, and was avoidable because decided cases of the supreme court and the court of appeal were cited at the hearing of the application. Hence, they contend that the Tribunal, which subsequently strcuk out paragraphs of Ngige’s petition is biased and should be replaced by an unbiased panel.
Ngige’s appeals are covered by two out of the six interlocutory appeals pending before the appealate court, arising from the proceedings at the tribunal.The other four were filed by People Democratic Party (PDP),Comrade Tony Nwoye , PDP candidate and Dr Chike Obidigbo of APGA.
All appeals relate to the issue of striking out paragraphs of the respective petitions.
