Tribunal ruling: Okowa, Ogboru, Emerhor know fate next week

The Elections Petitions Tribunal sitting in Asaba, Delta State on Tuesday withheld its ruling on the applications Governor Ifeanyi Okowa filed against the petition of the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Olorogun O’Teger Emerhor; and his counterpart in the Labour Party, Chief Great Ogboru, until June 30.

Okowa and the Peoples Democratic Party had in separate applications queried the jurisdiction of the tribunal to entertain their petitions, urging the panel to quash it, having been abandoned.

When the matter came up on Tuesday, the counsel to Okowa, Dr. Alex Iziyon (SAN), who appeared with Ken Mozia (SAN) and seven others, said the tribunal would be grasping with failure if it fails to understand the nature of their applications.

According to Iziyon, because the matter before the tribunal touched on the spinal cord of Ogboru and Emerhor’s petitions, the tribunal is therefore bound by the respondents’ objection.

“I urge Your Lordships to be persuaded and abide by the Supreme Court’s position on pre-election matter because it was the pre-election matter that ignited their petitions in the first instance,” Iziyon argued.

But in their separate submissions, counsels to Ogboru, Dele Adesina (SAN) who appeared with nine others, and Emerhor, Thompson Okpoko (SAN), who appeared with three others, described Okowa’s applications as a “mischief”.

According to Okpoko, Okowa’s application was designed to limit the stipulated 180 days lifespan of the tribunal.

“It is a mischief by the respondents (Okowa, PDP and INEC) to seek that the petitions be struck out without hearing. Rather than create avenue for injustice, the proper thing to do is to hear the petitions on their merit as provided for in Section 38 of the amendment constitution, 2010,” Okpoko maintained.

Adesina prayed the tribunal to give full-weight to paragraph 12/5 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act as amended so that the petitioners could ventilate their grievances instead of entertaining “frivolous applications”.

The tribunal thereafter deferred its ruling on arguments of the parties in the matter until Tuesday.