The Bayelsa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, on Monday, dismissed a motion filed by the All Progressives Congress and its candidate in the 2023 Bayelsa State governorship poll, Timipre Sylva, seeking the disqualification of members of the panel from the matter.
The motion is coming after a petition demanding the disbandment of the tribunal failed.
In November last year the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Douye Diri, won the state governorship election and was declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Diri polled 175,196 to defeat his closest rival, Sylva of the APC, who garnered 110,108 votes while the Labour Party polled 905 votes.
Dissatisfied with the polls result, Sylva and the APC filed a petition at the election petition tribunal.
On March 4, 2024, the APC and Sylva, in a petition, accused the tribunal of bias and demanded that it should be disbanded and another constituted.
They specifically accused the tribunal of denying them their constitutional right to a fair hearing as required by law by ordering them to call their 234 witnesses within seven days.
As a result of the allegations, the tribunal headed by Justice Adekunle Adeleye, adjourned sine die (indefinitely).
However, the Court of Appeal President ordered the tribunal to resume proceedings on Monday.
At the proceedings, the counsel for Sylva, Tunde Falola, told the tribunal that his clients filed a fresh application against the members of the panel.
He said the tribunal had exhibited strange conducts that made them believe that they would be denied a fair hearing.
Falola, therefore, asked the tribunal to, in the interest of justice, step aside from the matter and allow other members to be constituted by the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, to determine their petition within the little time remaining for the expiration of the hearing of the case.
But Diri’s lawyer, Chris Uche (SAN), opposed the application and urged the tribunal to dismiss it.
Counsel for the third respondent, Tayo Oyetibo(SAN), described the application as a calculated attempt to present afresh the petition earlier rejected by the appellate court’s president.
Oyetibo said, “This application, upon careful perusal, is a calculated attempt by the petitioners to rescue the petition from the legal consequences of a battered and tattered evidence brought forward by them.”
The three-member panel led by Justice Adekunle Adeleye dismissed the motion.
He held that a letter from the Appeal Court President, Justice Dongban-Mensem, on March 5, mandated the tribunal to proceed with the hearing of the petition, irrespective of any application by the parties.
Adeleye added that Justice Dongban-Mensem letter had overtaken the request by the petitioners for the disbandment of the tribunal.
The tribunal, however, fixed March 13 and 14 for the Independent National Electoral Commission being the 1st respondent, to open and close its defence.
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