August 15, (THEWILL) – Professor Mike Ozekhome SAN, the lead counsel to the Cross River State Governor in the just concluded hearing of the petition seeking the nullification of the governorship election, says they have no case against the governor’s election.
The senior advocate disclosed this to newsmen after the tribunal, headed by Justice Oken Inneh, adopted the final address of the litigants.
The petition, which is marked as EPT/CR/GOV/02/2023, has Professor Sandy Onor, the PDP gubernatorial candidate and his party as petitioners.
The four respondents in the suit are the Independent National Electoral Commission, Governor Bassey Otu, Peter Odey (Deputy Governor) and the All Progressives Congress.
Professor Ozekhome SAN, counsel to the second and third respondents, insisted that they have been wasting their time in court and that the entire case has been a distraction to the Governor.
In his words, “The case is predicated on the allegations that the second respondent (Gov Otu) was not educated up to secondary school level, but they abandoned that and started talking about forgery/discrepancies in certificates.
“The petitioners never had any case and in any case, we had tendered about six judgments and they had challenged all these issues at the pre-election level and we won all the cases up to the Supreme Court.
“The courts held that this man was qualified but they came here again to relitigate because they had no case against the second and third respondent, it was a mere distraction” the senior advocate said.
He added that from their final address to the tribunal, from July 10, 2023, when the Petitioners withdrew grounds two and three of their petitions, which were phoney, their petition collapsed like a pack of cards.
However, counsel to the petitioners, Dr J. Y. Musa SAN, said they drew the court’s attention to the fact that the case was essentially on the fact that the second and third respondents lied on oath.
According to him, “We did not allege any forgery but they are the ones who brought certificates showing there could be forgery.
“The Governor did not provide any document in his particulars of personal qualification.
“In order to answer on that, they now brought in certificates which were in contradistinction with what was attached to the Form EC9 which is why we said they lied on oath”, Dr Musa SAN said.
He added that they opened a Pandora’s box themselves and they saw the discrepancies.
About the Author
THEWILL Correspondent, Aniekan Bassey has over six years experience that spans across several fields in print journalism including development communication, sexual reproductive and health rights issues, crime, climate change, social justice, business and human interest stories.
