The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dragged the Justices of Rivers state National and states Houses Assembly Tribunal before the Chief Justice of Nigeria justice Mahmoud Mohammed and the NJC.
They are to intervene in getting the Certified True Copy of the judgement of the National and State Election Petition tribunal.
In the letter dated October 28, 2015, written by Chief Godwin Obla,SAN counsel to the PDP and INEC in the petiton appealed to the CJN for urgent intervention against present and imminent miscarriage of justice.
He asked for the intervention of the CJN in respect of the CTC of the judgement in the case between Mr. Wali Belief Azeru vs. Michael Okechukwu Chinda and Dr. OtoGwung Dressman vs. INEC and others.
Obla said, “while we appreciate the peculiar demand of time that may have necessitated such near crippling judicial adventure having to deliver a total of 1e judgements within a space of six hours in a day, it is however utterly worrisome that the judgments as pronounced in the open tribunal on the said 26th of October 2015, in respect of the two reference petitions above merely pronounced on the award of reliefs without any allusion as to the requisite decision and judicial reasons thereof.
“While one may reasonably attribute the tribunal recourse to such brevity to the exigency of time, it however fall grossly short of legal requirements mandating the court or tribunal to clearly state the legal principle and decision arrived therefrom upon which the judgement is based, just as it is applicable to the hierarchy of courts where such mode of judgement is countenanced by law, i.e, at the court of appeal and the supreme Court.
“Our worry over the above became more heightened when upon our written application to the tribunal for the CTC ofthe judgement or in the alternative, a CTC of the hand written judgement to be made available to us as to enable us decide on the required step as prompmpty as possible, in view of the limited time frame for any subsequent step to challenge the judgement, same was bluntly turned by the registry of the tribunal as it questioned the visibility of acceding to the grant of the CTC of a document it has no access to even as it also equally raise the issue of directive to the tribunal in the open court that no such request could be acceded until three days after the judgement”
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