National Assembly Poll: Tribunal Reserves Judgement In Jos

The National and House of Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Jos, last Monday reserved judgment in a suit filed by Mrs Zainab Dogo of the PDP, challenging the victory of Mr Abubakar Mohammed of the APC in the February 23 poll.
The tribunal, which made the declaration after listening to the parties in the matter said that the date for the judgment would be communicated to all parties in due course.
Dogo and her party, PDP, challenged Mohammed , APC and INEC over his (Mohammed’s) victory at the February 23 House of Assembly elections at the Tribunal.
Adopting his final written addresses, Mohammed , through his counsel, Mr Sunday Obende, asked the tribunal to dismiss Dogo’s petition for lack of merit.
Obende argued: “we are contending the submission of the petitioners in the first paragraph of their final written address as incompetent as they don’t have an answer to it.”
“You can’t mix a ground of corrupt practices with noncompliance at the same time as such is not known to law especially when the tribunal has given us a practice direction.
“It’s on this premise that we are asking this honorable tribunal to dismiss the petition for lack of merit, ” he argued.
Obende submitted that the petition should be struck in its entirety having not been proved in anyway by the petitioners.
According to him, “The ingredients to establish that the petitioners scored the majority votes in the February 23 House Assembly elections are lacking.
“Such claim of scoring the majority lawful votes by the petitioners must be supported by relevant documents to show that indeed they won the election.
“Since they don’t have any credible evidence to effect a removal of a candidate duly elected, we wish to urge your Lordships to dismiss and struck out the petition for lack of merit, ” Obende pleaded.
Also speaking, Mr L.D. Dafer, lead counsel to APC, urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition for lack of merit
According to him, by virtue of section 138 (1)(p of the Electoral Act, the petition should be dismissed for lack of proof.
But Zainab through her counsel, Mr I.B. Shening, debunked the claims of the Mohammed and APC, and claimed that they were able to show to the tribunal concrete evidences that Zainab pulled the majority lawful votes but was denied.
Shening asserted that the denial was as a result of the malpractices and manipulation that took place during the elections.
“We didn’t joined issues as claimed by the respondents but we were so careful to prove that there were irregularities that characterized the elections”, Shening said.