Senator Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe of Cross River North Senatorial District has begun to defend his mandate in the Calabar election petition tribunal. His legal team is led by Mr Mba Ukweni, SAN, a Calabar-based constitutional lawyer.
Jarigbe presented the tribunal with 1,531 exhibits, including original Certified True Copies of IREV and hard copies of forms EC8A1 Result sheets.
Speaking to journalists at the Election Petition Tribunal in Calabar, Ukweni SAN stated that around 500 people from the Senatorial district were lined up to testify, but the election petition tribunal cut the number to 33.
“The Tribunal said we could call up to 33 witnesses, but many people want to testify,” he said.
“It took us time yesterday (Thursday) to persuade them that many of them are not on the list, and they said they want to come and defend their mandate,” the Senior Advocate stated.
“We have over 500 people ready to testify for those who are already on the list, but the tribunal has limited us to 33.”
Ukweni refuted petitioners’ assertions that the Cross River North Senatorial District election was manipulated, noting that no evidence was presented.
His words; “There was no document they tendered to show that the result was rigged. What they were merely trying to do was the declaration of the result which is Form EC8E1 to show that the other candidates who lost their names were not on the declaration of the result list. We will explain that in our final address.
“That form is meant to declare the winner of the election and not the person who lost. The election is a process, from the polling units to the wards, from the wards to the local government before you go to the Senatorial collation.
“So are they saying the summation of results from the constituency level they are in doubt about the scores of the various parties?
“So it is not until their names and scores are included in Form EC8E1 that we can say they participated or any crooked thing was done?
“No crooked thing was done. If you had asked him further he would have explained the circumstances because it was their intention (the petitioners) to change the scores and the people themselves resisted.
“The petitioners had the intention to change the scores and he (petitioner) was the sitting governor and so had powers to do what he wanted to do but the people of the Northern Senatorial District resisted.
“It is not just that once a petition has been filed, it is bound to succeed. Generally, what we are we just want to be doubly sure otherwise yesterday when we came in, we would have said we are resting our case on their case. But we want to be doubly sure, it’s like killing an ant with a sledgehammer.”
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