APC chieftain attacks election tribunal over unfavourable rulings

monjola sotubo

May 13, 2016 2:29 PM

Akpoebi Benson criticized the Justice Kazeem Alogba-led tribunal for rejecting electronically-generated evidence after it had been admitted.

A chieftain of the

Akpoebi Benson criticized the Justice Kazeem Alogba-led tribunal for rejecting electronically-generated evidence after it had been admitted, The Nation reports.

The Bayelsa APC chieftain made the comment via a statement released on Thursday, May 12, 2016.

It reads:

The decision by the tribunal to admit the evidence in one breath and avoid it being played to the hearing of the tribunal is a clear case of perversion of justice and brazen bias. This is a rape of court proceedings more so that the nation’s apex court, the Supreme Court had in Dickson vs Kubor ruled in a similar case.

We are worried that a lower court of jurisdiction like a tribunal could flagrantly give a contrary decision on same issue that had been settled by the Supreme Court. Wherein the source of such powers are unknown to law, actions as this, taken by the election petition tribunal can only be products of compromise.

Our fears about the impartiality of the tribunal have been on and suppressed for long. But Tuesday’s decision was one too many. It gave out the tribunal as a biased body that contends with integrity challenges. This is more so that Governor Dickson has been boasting about how he has pocketed members of the tribunal.

For the avoidance of doubt, the DVD in question was processed and stored in a computer owned by Channels TV and there was certainty about its compliance to the extent that same has to be demonstrated once admitted in evidence.

The evidence so admitted but kept away cannot be for sale in the market but for demonstration to serve justice as enunciated by Section 84 of the Evidence Act.

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