Produce Gagdi Ward Results Or Risks Jail, Plateau Tribunal Orders INEC REC

Yakubu Busari

The National /State Houses of Assembly Election Tribunal on Monday has ordered and compiled the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Plateau State to appear with three documents of Gagdi ward results for the 18th March 2023 canceled polling units results.

Honourable Justice, Bello Muhammed Tukur gave the ordered best on an application brought before the trial tribunal to produce the Prof. Daniel Davou Dabi results of inconclusive polling units results from Kanam Local Government Council of Plateau state.

The petitioners raised alarm that the returning officer failed to declare the winner owning to numerous problems of mutilation, irregularities, over voting exercises that took place.

Earlier, during the proceedings on Monday, the Chairman of the Trial Tribunal ordered INEC and the petitioners to move to the headquarters of INEC in search of the missing documents that the election umpire failed to produce while on the subpoena to tender the following documents of P23 items 1,4,7 as exhibits P23.

According to the tribunal chairman, there are documents which were the declaration of Dr Jimmam Lar the second returning officer after 2 months of confusion over the winner of the 18th March governorship and National /State Houses of Assembly election held in Plateau Central senatorial district of the state.

The documents available and marked as exhibits P8c, and P8d were tendered through Pw1 but the forms EC8A1 , EC8G where the first respondent’s, INEC, such are documents in existence 1,4,5,6,7 that are marked as exhibits P22 respectively.

The exhibits we are talking about are documents that were signed by Prof Daniel Davou Dabi which are listed in the subpoena as he failed to declare the winner because some agents refused to sign owning the fraud in the polling units 

Nyilini disclosed that they confirmed that PW1 submitted the documents and INEC assured of producing more documents but today these documents are missing.

The REC was ordered within 12 working hours or risked going to jail having failed to produce vital documents at the ongoing Election Tribunal sitting in Jos, Plateau state on Monday 25th Day of September 2023.

The Chairman of the Election Tribunal ordered INEC to produce results of the Plateau Central Senatorial district conducted by Prof.Daniel Davou Dabi which the said documents were still in custody of the INEC.

According to the petitioner’s counsel, Philip Nyilini , his application is predicated on section 69 of the electoral act that INEC, Resident commissioner as the chief custodian of the documents since the officer that was delegated to produce these vital documents is unwilling to do so contrary to the submission of the respondents in exhibits P32 in  EC8E1 as paragraph 2.

Nyilini explained further that the outstanding documents are paramount to the proceedings, but the counsel to the first respondent Mr. Sani Rabiu told the trial tribunal that the said documents 4&7 are available in INEC custody, which the representative of REC presented them and the court admitted them and marked it as exhibits.

The petitioners stressed that they needed the documents to speak to the tribunal to help their case in the proceedings where the respondent sought a 48-hour adjournment to enable them to process the documents.

Sani, assured the tribunal of producing the following documents listed, but when the stand down from 9 am to 1 pm for the petitioners and counsel to the first respondent to go to INEC  and the counsel to INEC said the REC was not in town the officer in charge of ICT was nowhere to be found.