Tribunal Over rules Ogboru, Labour Party, Admits Okowa’s document as exhibit

Governor Okowa’s defense in the on-going Governorship Election Tribunal sitting in Asaba got a significant boost yesterday when the Chairman of the tribunal Justice Nasiru  Gunmi, overruled an objection by the Labour Party seeking to stop counsel to Okowa from tendering exhibits, which could weaken Labour Party’s case.

 Counsel to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, Mr. Ken Mozea, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) had during cross examination of Labour Party (LP) state chairman, Chief Tony Ezeagwu, who is also one of the star witnesses to Ogboru, sought to tender  a document containing notice of Labour party’s gubernatorial primary to the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC)  before the tribunal.
However, counsel to Ogboru, Mr. Dele  Adesina (SAN), sensing the damage the document will cause to Labour party’s case objected on the premise that the document that the Okowa team wanted to tender were neither pleaded, listed nor front loaded. A point he maintained, violates the provisions of the Electoral Act 2012.

But, Mozea, raised objection pointing out that the document was pleaded  in paragraph one of the first respondent’s reply. He argued that the essence of cross examination was to test the veracity of the witness’ statement and that the document he sought to tender was a key element in testing the witness.

To add fillip to Mozea’s argument, Counsels to  INEC and PDP , Dr. Onyechi  Ikpeazu  (SAN) and  Mr. Akinlolu Timothy Kehinde, (SAN) aligned themselves with the position  of Mozea and restated that under the Evidence Act,  a witness  can be  cross examined on any document  that is not listed. They maintained that in the instant case, the documents sought to be tendered were front-loaded and listed. At this juncture, Justice Nasiru Gunmi overruled counsel to Ogboru and admitted the document.

 Meanwhile, The Labour Party Chairman, Ezeagwu, had while in the witness box admitted that some LP agents were arrested by the police in connection with the theft of some INEC documents and told the tribunal that the matter is currently in court. 

There was an attempt by Ezeagwu to disown his statement as he told the tribunal that  while preparing the statement deposed  on oath before the court, that INEC officials, party agents and his lawyers  made input and assisted  with relevant information  in the course of preparing the statement. As a result, he averred that the statement was not his whole idea.
But he affirmed that the governorship election which PDP, APC and LP participated in was conducted largely with the use of card readers.

He said that during the election, information about the election results were received from their party agents as he did not participate in the uploading of information into INEC server.
And confronted with the election  result figures  where Okowa scored  724,680 votes ,  to defeat  Ogboru, who  polled 130,028, and that even if the 205,000 disputed votes were removed from the total score, that Okowa  will still  score higher votes ,  Ezeagwu said that INEC calculation could not have been correct.

Attempts  by the  INEC counsel to further cross examine  Ezeagwu met a brick wall as he ( Ezeagwu) asked INEC counsel to direct further questions on the subject to his party’s counsel and declined to answer further  questions .

It was a sort of drama as the tribunal chairman intervened to compel Ezeagwu to answer questions as directed by the respondent’s counsel. But even the Tribunal Chairman’s intervention was rebuffed and Justice Gunmi had to ask him to step out of the witness box and adjourned the matter till tomorrow, September 8, 2015 for continuation of trial.