Judgment in the titanic court battle on the validity of the governorship election on 11 April in the southern Nigerian state of Akwa Ibom has been deferred.
Justice Sadiq Umar, the chairman of the election tribunal sitting in Abuja told the parties that a date for the judgment will be communicated to them.
This followed the adoption of final written addresses by parties with the counsel to the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Umana Umana, stressing that the election was “alien to civilisation”.
Umana and the APC had approached the tribunal challenging the conduct of the election and declaration of Udom Emmanuel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as winner.
At the sitting, counsel to the petitioner, Wole Olanipekun SAN, started with an application to amend the date on his address to read September 30 instead of October 30. But this was objected to by counsel to the second respondent, Tayo Oyetibo. He insisted that the error must not be corrected.
But Olanipekun reminded him that the law says a petitioner shall within seven days “file” his written address and that the law refers to filing and nothing more.
He noted that Oyetibo himself had earlier made some minor corrections on his address. After hearing from both parties, the tribunal ruled that the petitioners effect the change but that respondents could file reply on point of law if any.
Adopting his address, petitioner’s counsel, Wole Olanipekun, prayed the tribunal to allow the petition and grant all reliefs sought therein.
He noted that in the course of trial, he tendered 360 documentary evidence and called 52 witnesses. Olanipekun said while paragraphs 8,9,11,12 and 14 of the final address dealt with accreditation, paragraph 16, 17 dealt with collation while 24-29 took care of the result.
He insisted that accreditation is compulsory in an election; be it through the use of Card Reader or Option A4.
“Accreditation is a must in any election. Which accreditation did they use in this particular exercise when they failed to tender Incident Forms”, he said.