The petition tribunal for the presidential election rejected a request lodged by a Hope Democratic Party faction requesting its exclusion from the continuing petition challenging the conduct of the 2019 elections.
The tribunal deemed the request of the party unmeritorious in a decision on Thursday and subsequently rejected it.
The faction of the Hope Democratic Party, led by Tapre Poland, had asked the presidential tribunal to remove its name in the petition on the basis that the immediate petition was supposedly introduced without their permission.
The first petitioner, Albert Owuru, who leads another party faction, approached the tribunal without the party’s approval, according to the Poland-led HDP.
The HDP also claimed that while the petition was seen to have been introduced by the first and second petitioners, so far the documents for the litigation have been handled by the first petitioner without the authorisation of the party.
The Poland-led HDP had also submitted in a written notice to the court that Mr. Owuru, the first petitioner, was suspended and asked the court to deal with him as an individual if he wanted to proceed with the petition.
In a supporting argument, President Muhammadu Buhari’s counsel, Wole Olanikpekun, requested the court, in the interest of fair hearing, to consider the application made by the Hope Democratic Party.
The right to sue as a complainant is strongly linked to the right to a fair hearing, according to Mr Olanikpekun.
He argued that the second petitioner’s complaint was enough to warrant removing his name from the ongoing petition.
Furthermore, Mr Olanikpekun submitted that removing the name of the second petitioner from the case is not the same as dropping the petition.
In his part, Mr. Owuru, through his lawyer, Chukwunoyerem Njoku, requested the tribunal to determine whether, in the immediate petition, he had the power to remove the name of the second petitioner.
He also argued that in the substantive petition, the lawyer for the second petitioner, Anthony Agbolahan, was not part of the attorneys registered as counsel.
Therefore, Mr Owuru asked if the court had the right to hold a complaint from what he described in the immediate petition as “a stranger applicant.”
He further stated that during the 2018 convention he had chaired the operations of the party and added that none of the second petitioner’s representatives had challenged his chairing of the convention of the party to date.
The court ruled that the second petitioner’s request was bordered on an election petition in its ruling.
“It is the political party that conducts an election, not the candidate. There is no section of the law that allow for independent candidacy.
The court also ruled that the applicants failed to swear to any affidavit to controvert the submissions of the first petitioner that he was a leader of the party.”
The inability of the party to contest the said submissions amounted, according to the court, to confirm them.
Accordingly, the tribunal ruled that there is nothing before the tribunal on the basis of section 12(1) of the evidence act to demonstrate that Hope Democratic Party is opposed to the submissions and Mr. Owuru is opposed to party governance.
The tribunal therefore said the immediate application failed because the group that failed to contest the management of Mr Owuru could not claim to act against their approval.
The court also rejected a request by the Independent National Electoral Commission and Mr. Buhari to ensure that the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM)’s pre-hearing request is overturned.
In this request, the candidates had asserted that the PDM did not request approval in due time to file a prehearing notice.
However, that submission was controversial by the tribunal, which held that the PDM had requested that the tribunal entertain its pre-hearing requests in due course.
