Appeal Tribunal Orders For Retrial On Ubandoma Laven LGA Election Tribunal Suit

Yakubu Busari

The Plateau State Local Government Election Appeal Tribunal has ordered for the hearing of a chairmanship petition on merit by the Plateau State Local Government Election Petition Tribunal.

Chairman of the Appellate tribunal, Justice Arum Ashom gave the order in a judgement in the appeal of Ubandoma Joshua Laven and Peoples Democratic Party against Kwarnim Nanloh, All Progressive Congress and the Plateau State independent Electoral Commission.

Upon the conduct of the 10/10/18 councillorship and local government chairmanship elections by PLASIEC and subsequent returned of Kwarnim Nanloh of APC as chairman of Langtang North, dissatisfied, Ubandoma Joshua Laven and PDP approached the tribunal for redress.

However, through preliminary objections and motions on notices, counsel to the respondents challenged the jurisdiction of the tribunal to hear the petition on grounds of it being incompetent, statute barred and filed out of time.

Deciding on the objections raised, the trial tribunal chaired by Jovita Binjim with Jacob Longden and Isaiah Randa as members, in its wisdom struck out the petition which prompted the petitioners filing an appeal against that decision.

The ground for the appeal was Appeal Tribunal to determined whether they were heard on merit, if they were giving rights to fair hearing when the tribunal refused to use the two sets of results of the election presented before it and if the date for the declaration of the results were not wrongly calculated

Deciding on the four issues raised, the Appeal Tribunal with Justice Arum Ashom as chairman with Nankwat Shaseet and Martin Omohwo as members while resolving the four grounds for the appeal in favour of the appellants said the appeal succeeds as there was miscarriage of Justice by the lower tribunal.

Setting aside the ruling of the tribunal on 14/1/19 dismissing the petition of the petitioners, the Chairman pointed that arriving at that could not have arisen if the tribunal had looked at the witnessed statement of Kwarnim Nanloh which adduce to the fact that results were announced on 16/10/18 instead of 10/10/18 as alluded to.

Subsequently, the Appeal Tribunal chairman, Justice Are Ashom ordered the petition to be return to the trial tribunal to be heard base on merit.