By Nelson Utip
The Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Yenagoa, Bayelsa state has dismissed a fresh motion filed by the All Progressives Congress, APC, and its governorship candidate Timipre Sylva, asking for the disqualification of members of the panel from going on with their petition challenging the election victory of Governor Douye Diri in the last gubernatorial election in the state, Justice Adekunle Adeleye, Chairman of The Tribunal squashed the motion after taking arguments from counsel to Sylva, Tunde Falola, Charles Edosanwan for INEC, Chris Uche, SAN, for Governor Diri, Chukwuma Machukwu Ume, for the Deputy Governor and Tayo Oyetibo for Peoples Democratic Party PDP In a brief ruling, Justice Adeleke said that a letter from the President of the Court of Appeal on March 5, mandated the tribunal to proceed with the hearing of the petition, irrespective of any application by the parties, positing that the letter has overtaken the request by the petitioners for the disbandment of the tribunal.
Falola, Sylva’s lawyer argued that his clients filed the fresh application against the tribunal believing that the two petitioners were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that they could not get justice from members of the panel.
Both Sylva and the APC claimed that the tribunal cannot give them justice by the way they are carrying on with the proceedings so far.
The lawyer asked the tribunal to, in the interest of justice, stop proceedings and allow other members to be constituted by the PCA to determine their petition within the little time remaining for the expiration of the hearing of the case.
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All the respondents however through their lawyers, opposed the request for the panel members to recuse themselves, arguing that the application was an attempt to prevent the respondents from presenting their defence against the petition, they saw the motion by the duo as a calculated attempt to blackmail the tribunal members to do their bidding.
According to the four respondents, the petitioners had closed their cases before the expiration of the allotted time and so there was no basis for the allegation of denial of fair hearing.
They also stated that APC and Sylva were intergal parts of the pre-hearing session and agreed to the schedule of time as agreed upon by all the parties.
March 13 and 14 days of March has been fixed for INEC, being the 1st respondent, to open and close its defence.
