A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa state, has criticise the Justice Kazeem Alogba-led Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja for some of its rulings.
An ex-officio member of the party Mr. Akpoebi Benson, in a statement yesterday faulted the tribunal for rejecting the public demonstration of an electronically-generated evidence to the hearing of the tribunal after it had been admitted.
The evidence was to show whether or not the Southern Ijaw local government election was cancelled or postponed as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Justice Alogba on Tuesday, while admitting the evidence, a DVD through a private television station, Channels, also stopped it from being played. This happened during the process of demonstrating the recorded video clip of the cancellation that was announced by the state Resident Electoral Commissioner, Baritor Kpaghi.
In the statement issued on behalf of the party after the tribunal’s decision, the APC contended that keeping the evidence without demonstrating it was meant to cover some tracks.
“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.
“In Kubor v Dickson the Supreme Court examined the provisions of Sections 84, 34(1)(b) and 258 of the EvidenceAct 2011 regarding the concept of a ‘document’ and the admissibility of electronic evidence.
“A party that seeks to tender in evidencecomputer generated document needs to do more than just tendering same from the bar.Evidence in relation to the use of the computer must be called to establish the conditions set out under section 84(2) of the Evidence Act 2011.”