Prof. Daniel Saror, defeated ANPP candidate in the April 2011 polls in Benue, has appealed to Election Petition Tribunals in the country to handle petitions based on their circumstances.?
Saror said on Friday in Makurdi, that the ripples being generated by the recent Supreme Court's judgment on the governorship petition in Borno was not healthy for the country.?
He expressed regret that tribunals were using that judgment as a basis to terminate pending cases before them.?
Saror said the cases before the tribunals were not the same and ought to be treated based on their individual circumstances.?
Saror, a former Senator, said a wholesale admission and application of the judgment to determine other cases at the tribunal would spell doom for the country.?
He said the trend would encourage lazy lawyers who would devise ways of delaying cases beyond the statutory 180 days to win on technical grounds.?
The ANPP chieftain, who lost the contest twice, explained that the framers of the 1999 Constitution never intended to frustrate aggrieved parties at tribunals by the inclusion of 180 days.?
Instead, he said, the intention was to expedite the judicial process involving the trial of such cases.?
He, therefore, appealed to the judiciary not to be so “mathematical in the calculation of the 180 days but to consider the circumstances of each case”.?
Saror warned that if the courts insisted on a “mathematical tabulation of 180 days”, the stage would be set for those in power to use money and political influence to induce judicial officers to frustrate cases.?
He regretted that already some cases were being frustrated at the courts more than a year after party primaries were held.?
“More than a year after PDP held its primaries; Kaki's case challenging the nomination of Suswam is still pending at the high court.”
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