The All Progressives Congress, APC, and its candidate, Chief Timipre Sylva, on Monday, applied for the disbandment of the Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which is currently hearing the case they filed to challenge the outcome of the gubernatorial election that held in the state on November 11, 2023.
In a petition they wrote to the President of the Court of Appeal, Sylva and the APC said they no longer have confidence in the ability of the Justice Adekunele Adeleye-led three-member panel tribunal to do justice in the electoral dispute.
While accusing the panel of openly exhibiting its bias against them, the petitioners alleged that whereas they proposed to call a total of 224 witnesses to prove that the election was not won by governor Douye Diri of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the tribunal only allowed them to call 49 witnesses within seven days.
In the petition that was signed by their lawyer, Mr. Sylvester Elema, SAN, Sylva and the APC insisted that they were denied fair hearing by the tribunal which they further accused of distorting its record of the proceedings to favour the Respondents.
“It was a clear breach of the right of fair hearing to prevent the petitioners from calling all their witnesses when the lifespan of the Tribunal still has over 3 (three) months to its expiration date.
“Upon the perusal of the Record of Proceedings , we were perplexed to find that the Tribunal had already made their findings and decisions in respect of the authenticity and weight of the documents (polling unit results) tendered by the petitioners even before the conclusion of the case.
“The Records of Proceedings show several distortions of what actually transpired in court.
“It is obvious from the forgoing that the petitioners cannot get justice from the Tribunal as presently constituted, since it is obvious that the tribunal Chairman has descended into the arena of the legal conflict between the parties.
“In the light of the abnormalities mentioned above, we respectfully request your lordship to disband the membership of the Tribunal and reconstitute same urgently.
“As earlier indicated above, we have up till 28th of May, 2024 before the lifespan of the Tribunal will expire. So there is still enough time for a new Tribunal to start de novo and conclude trial within the constitutional lifespan of 180 (one hundred and eighty) days,” the petition further read.
Likewise, in a separate letter they forwarded to the tribunal, Sylva and the APC applied for their case against the outcome of the Bayelsa governorship poll to be adjourned sine-die (indefinitely), pending the outcome of their petition against the tribunal.
Meanwhile, when the case was called on Monday, the Chairman of the tribunal, Justice Adeleye, acknowledged that the panel received a copy of the petition against it.
Reacting to the development, counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mr. Charles Edosanwan, SAN, described the action of the petitioners as “highly regrettable and embarrassing to the legal profession.”
“The petitioners opened and finished their case and upon realising their very poor fortune, rather than to man up and accept the result, resorted to this kind of conduct which I describe as a blackmail to this tribunal and the judiciary.
“It will be prejudicial to the 1st Respondent (INEC) to adjourn the sitting at the instance of the petitioners that have completed their case,” Edosanwan, SAN, argued.
Similarly, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, who stood for governor Douye Diri, Mr. Chukwuma Machukwu Ume, SAN, who was counsel to the Deputy Governor, Lawrence Ewhrujakpo, as well as Mr. Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, who represented the PDP, berated the petitioners, accusing them of attempting to portray the tribunal in a bad light.
They urged the tribunal to either dismiss the petition with a huge cost or grant the request for indefinite adjournment of the case.
In a brief ruling, the panel held that it was minded to suspend further proceedings in the matter to await the directive of the Court of Appeal President.
It will be recalled that INEC had declared that governor Diri of the PDP garnered a total of 175, 196 votes to defeat his closest rival, Sylva of the APC who polled 110, 108 votes.
However, dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, Sylva, who served as governor of the state from 2008 to 2012, and the immediate past Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, approached the tribunal, alleging that results of the election in three Local Government Areas, LGAs, were wrongly excluded by INEC.
He told the tribunal that whereas election held in Southern Ijaw, Ogbia and Nembe LGAs, however, the electoral body voided polling unit results that were forwarded for collation.
Sylva insisted that contrary to INEC’s position that election did not hold in the affected LGAs, its officials supervised the election and sent results from the various polling units to the collation center.
According to him, had it been that results from the three LGAs, which he described as his strongholds, were included, he would have won the gubernatorial contest.
Besides, the APC and its candidate alleged that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines, were bypassed in some polling units.
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