Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana has revealed why election petition cases cannot be held before the Inauguration of the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. So many calls have been made this week for the court to hasten the process to finally determine the winner of the Presidential election.
The Legal Eagle has however, explained that the process in which the petitioner will get the evidences he needs to argue his case takes a lot of time. He clarified that the response of the respondent and the electoral commission will determine how fast the cases can be accelerated in Court.
He said, ''People take advantage of the provisions of the law, you file a petition challenging the return made by the INEC. The onus is on the petitioner to prove that the election was not properly conducted. To serve your opponents, it's a laborious exercise, to get the materials from the electoral body is problematic. For example, In Rivers state, some of the Lawyers who were preparing an election petition to challenge the governorship election were arrested.
And Governor Wike came out to justify it. Now, you then have a number of days to file your petition for the defendants or the respondent if you get them to serve, to file their reply and their time will begin to run when you have served them. To get the materials that you need, you will need to go to court and get another order compelling INEC to give you the materials. Now, you are going to call witnesses, the petitioners will have to call witnesses, the respondents will have to call witnesses, and INEC will have to call witnesses. All this will have to take place the entirety of the period.''
[Start From 13:23]
Content created and supplied by: OxygenNews (via Opera News )
COMMENTS