By Idowu Patrick<\/p>\n
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has also asked the Lagos State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal to dismiss the petition of the Labour Party\u2019s governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Viviour for lack of evidence.<\/p>\n
The submissions were contained In a 32-page final written address submitted to the tribunal by INEC\u2019s legal team led by Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Charles Edosomwan alongside six other lawyers<\/p>\n
The petitioner, Rhodes-Vivour had approached the tribunal on April 9th to challenge the outcome of the March 18 governorship elections conducted by INEC in Lagos State.<\/p>\n
When the trial started, the petitioner called 10 witnesses as proof of his case while INEC who is the first respondent called no witnesses but instead tendered two documents which were admitted as exhibits before the court<\/p>\n
INEC in its preliminary objection to the petition had submitted that Rhodes-Vivour challenged the elections in Alimosho, Ikorodu, Mushin, Surulere, Lagos Island, Lagos Mainland. Eti-Osa, Ibeju-Lekki, Apapa, Ojo, Shomolu, Ikeja, Ifako-Ijaiye, Oshodi-Isolo, and Epe Local Government Areas but noted that evidence was only led in relation to Alimosho, Mushin, Surulere and Lagos Island, and such evidence was a far cry from what the law demands of the petitioner.<\/p>\n
The electoral body urged the tribunal to note that no evidence was also called in the other local governments beyond the tendering of some documents which it says were simply \u201cdumped\u201d on the Tribunal.<\/p>\n
INEC also submitted that of the 10 witnesses called by the petitioner, 8 of them who testified either as supervisors or ward collation agents with respect to incidents that occurred at various polling units gave hearsay evidence of what they were told by polling unit agents, evidence which ought to be expunged from the court records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Idowu Patrick The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has also asked the Lagos State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal to dismiss the petition of the Labour Party\u2019s governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Viviour for lack of evidence. The submissions were contained In a 32-page final written address submitted to the tribunal by INEC\u2019s legal team led by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inec","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}