Headlines
Tribunal Orders Yakubu, REC to Produce Documents Demanded by Atiku
The five-man Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja on Wednesday ordered the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, and the commission’s Resident Electoral Commissioner in Zamfara State to produce electoral documents requested by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
The tribunal, led by Justice Mohammed Garba, gave the order after receiving complaints by the petitioners that INEC officials had refused to comply with the court’s subpoenas served on them for the production of the documents.
He ordered INEC officials to produce the documents in court on Thursday.
But the tribunal at the end of the proceedings, following a request by the petitioners’ lawyer, Chris Uche (SAN), fixed Friday as the next hearing day.
The Wednesday’s hearing was the ninth of the 10 days given to the petitioners to present their case.
The proceedings were adjourned Wednesday after the petitioners called nine additional witnesses, making a total of 58 they had called in nine days.
The PDP and Atiku, who are the petitioners challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress at the February 23, 2019 poll, spoke through their lawyer, Chief Chris Uche (SAN).
Before the petitioners started calling their witnesses on Wednesday, Uche informed the tribunal that INEC officials had refused to release the requested documents to the petitioners despite the fact that the fees for the certification of the documents had been paid to the commission.
“We have made concerted efforts and we stated in the letters we wrote to them that we had it on good authority that they were instructed not to release the documents,” Uche said.
Accusing both INEC chairman and the Zamfara State REC of disobedience to the summons of the court, he said that upon his clients’ applications, the court issued two subpoenas on July 9, 2019 which had been served on the two officials.
“One was upon the chairman of INEC for the production of some documents. The subpoena was issued on July 9, 2019. The documents were paid for. The subpoena was served on the same date of July 9, 2019. It was to produce documents, not to testify.
“On the same July 9, another subpoena was issued to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, INEC, in Zamfara State, Gusau, in which we applied for all the Forms EC8A (polling unit result sheets), and they refused to release them to us.
“They have not been produced and we have not seen them in court. Neither have the persons on whom the subpoenas were issued in court. We seek your lordships’ intervention,” he said.
Responding, Justice Mohammed Garba, who leads the panel, noted that the subpoenas were not served on INEC officials as claimed by the petitioners’ lawyer, but that one was served on the chairman on July 15 and the other was served on the REC, Zamfara State, on July 12.
In his reaction, INEC’s lawyer, Yunus Usman (SAN), said he and members of his legal team met with the commission’s chairman, up till 11.30pm on Tuesday but he never made mention of any subpoena.
As for the Zamfara REC, Usman said he received a text message from her indicating that the documents requested by the petitioners had been certified but the petitioners had refused to come up to make the needed payment.
Other respondents’ lawyers, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) for Buhari and Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) for the All Progressives Congress, said the petitioners ought to do more by liaising with INEC’s lead counsel and ought to have made the requests for the documents earlier than last week.
But responding, Uche said, “We have made so many efforts.
“We wrote a letter addressed to the chairman of INEC on April 15, 2019 and the letter was received the same date.
“An earlier one on the same subject matter was dated April 9, 2019 was received the same date.
“We also wrote an earlier one on the same subject-matter on March 12 and it was received the same date.”
In his comments before ruling, Justice Garba noted that the legal team representing INEC in the matter owed the court the duty to ensure that the court’s orders were obeyed by their clients.
“I have seen from the record of the court that the INEC chairman and the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Zamfara State, were duly served with subpoena issued on July 9, 2019, to produce documents named therein.
“The INEC chairman and the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Zamfara and the legal team representing them are under binding obligation to ensure that the orders contained in the subpoena are obeyed.”
The Punch
The Presidency has dismissed claims that Vice President Kashim Shettima’s recent comments were directed at the political situation in Rivers State or President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s constitutional decisions on the matter.
In a statement on Friday by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communications (Office of the Vice President), Stanley Nkwocha, the Presidency described the reports as a “gross misrepresentation.”
The statement clarified that Vice President Shettima’s remarks at the public presentation of a book by former Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN), were misconstrued by some online platforms and individuals.
“These reports have distorted the Vice President’s comments in pursuit of a mischievous agenda,” it stated.
“They twisted his account of how the administration of former President Jonathan considered removing him as Borno Governor during the insurgency to falsely link it with current events in Rivers State.”
The Vice President, who spoke at the launch of OPL 245: The Inside Story of the $1.3 Billion Oil Block in Abuja on Thursday, was said to have referenced the past solely to commend Adoke’s professionalism while in office, and to reflect on Nigeria’s constitutional evolution regarding federal and state relations.
“For the avoidance of doubt, President Tinubu did not remove Governor Fubara from office. The constitutional measure implemented was a suspension, not an outright removal.
“This action was taken in response to the grave political crisis in Rivers State at the time, with the governor facing a looming impeachment and the State Assembly complex under demolition,” Nkwocha clarified.
The Presidency insisted that the action taken by President Tinubu in declaring a state of emergency and suspending the Governor was fully in line with Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which authorises such measures when there is a breakdown of public order requiring extraordinary intervention.
According to the statement, the President’s proclamation invoking Section 305(2) was subsequently ratified by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the National Assembly, confirming the legitimacy and constitutional propriety of the decision.
“The action of President Tinubu in suspending Mr. Fubara and others from exercising the functions of office averted the governor’s outright removal. To conflate suspension with removal is misleading,” the statement further noted.
Nkwocha also stressed that Vice President Shettima’s comments were delivered extemporaneously and intended to underline the importance of public accountability and historical documentation.
He referenced the Vice President’s mention of past public servants, including Adoke and former Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, to illustrate principled leadership.
“His remarks were not in any way a criticism of President Tinubu’s actions, which the Vice President and the entire administration fully support and stand by without reservation,” the spokesman stated.
The Vice President, the statement added, remains in “loyal concert” with President Tinubu and is committed to implementing all constitutional measures necessary to safeguard democracy and uphold order across the country.
Concluding, the Presidency called on media organisations and political actors to desist from misrepresenting public remarks for sensational or partisan purposes.
“We urge media organisations and political actors to desist from the destructive practice of wrenching statements from context in order to fabricate nonexistent conflicts,” Nkwocha said.
Headlines
Akpabio Relieves Natasha of Committee Chairmanship Position, Appoints Akwa Ibom Senator As Replacement
Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, has replaced suspended Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, as the Chairman, Senate Committee on Diaspora/Non-Governmental Organisations.
In her place, Akpabio named Senator Bassey Aniekun Etim (Akwa Ibom -East).
The Senate President, who made the announcement on the floor in Abuja on Thursday, did not give any reasons.
The committee position had remained vacant since March when the Senate suspended the Kogi-Central Senatorial District lawmaker for six months for flouting the Senate’s rule on the seating arrangement and seat allocation.
The suspended lawmaker, at a point, chaired the Senate Committee on Local Content before Akpabio reassigned her to the Committee on Diaspora/NGO, shortly before she ran into trouble with the Senate over her conduct on seat allocation.
The Supreme Court has affirmed the 2024 governorship election victory of Governor Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), dismissing the appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Asuerinme Ighodalo.
In a unanimous decision by a five-member panel led by Justice Mohammed Garba, the apex court ruled that the appeal lacked merit. It upheld the earlier judgments of the Court of Appeal and the Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which had both declared Okpebholo the validly elected governor.
