APC and Sylva Express Lack of Confidence in Bayelsa State Governorship Tribunal
The All Progressives Congress, APC, and its governorship candidate in the November last year gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva on Monday in Abuja, passed a vote of no confidence on the Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.
They accused the Tribunal headed by Justice Adekunle Adeleye of undue bias against them in the conduct of proceedings, findings and decisions and demanded its outright disbandment and reconstitution.
In a strongly worded petition to the President of the Court of Appeal, APC and Sylva accused the Tribunal of denying them their Constitutional right to a fair hearing as required by law.
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.
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“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.
