Lagos Elections: Appeal Court President constitutes more panels for petitions

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mesem, has constituted two additional panels to hear petitions arising from the National and State House of Assembly Elections in Lagos.

This might not be unconnected with the large number of petitions filed before the Lagos Election Tribunal.

Our judiciary correspondent, Shola Soyele who obtained this information at the secretariat of the Lagos Tribunal in Ikeja today, also gathered that the new panels dubbed Panel 2 & 3 will commence sitting next week at the State High Court, sitting in Tafawa Balewa Square on Lagos Island.

Panel 1 will maintain its sitting at the Rosaline Omotoso Courthouse in Ikeja alongside the only panel sitting to hear the petitions on the governorship elections.

At the moment, parties before the tribunal are still filing relevant pre-hearing applications and the tribunal is expected to commence hearing of those applications next week.

At the close of receipt of petitions on April 9th, the Lagos State Governorship, National and State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal had received a total of 48 petitions in respect of the 2023 elections held on February 25 and March 11.

A breakdown of the petitions as obtained from the Secretariat showed that 4 petitions were filed to challenge the governorship elections held in the state on March 11, 2023.

Those who filed are the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and it’s candidate, Abdul-Azeez Adediran, as well as the Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who filed as the sole petitioner.

Others are the Allied People’s Movement (APM) and the Action People’s Party (APP).

The Tribunal also received 5 Petitions from five Senatorial candidates and 26 Petitions from House of Representatives candidates that lost during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections, while a total of 13 petitions were filed to challenge the elections into the State House of Assembly.