Plateau 2023 – Tribunal grants APC’s Candidate Dr Nentawe permission to inspect materials

By Israel Adamu,Jos

Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Governorship election in Plateau State 2023 election Dr Nentawe Yilwatda, has got the tribunal’s nod to inspect materials used for the governorship election.

The Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Jos gave the ruling, after hearing the two applications moved by Nentawe’s counsel, Jim Gotom.

In a motion exparte and motion on notice, Gotom hinted the tribunal that his motion is supported by a six-paragraph affidavit and that he was placing reliance on all of them.

He further hinted that a written address was attached to the affidavit with legal arguments and decided cases to back his application.

The applicant’s lawyer applied for leave and order of the tribunal to permit Nentawe, his counsel and agents to inspect the election materials such as tendered vote list, Electoral material Receipt, Ballot Paper Account and Verification Statement.

Other materials demanded to be inspected include, statement of Invalid, Rejected and Cancelled Ballot Papers, Statement of Unused and Spoilt Ballot Papers, Tendered Ballot statement, Results of Poll from Polling units, Summary of Results for Local government areas, Summary of Results for the State and Summary/Declaration of Results for candidates.

Gotom also requested that his client be permitted to inspect the Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and the Back End Server Report from the BVAS for all the polling Units and other relevant documents.

The applicant’s leading other lawyer Emma Yokpe then prayed the tribunal to direct INEC to comply forthwith with all the reliefs sought.

In a similar motion and application, Caleb Mutfwang of the PDP had applied for leave of the tribunal to also carry out similar exercise.

Mutfwang, through his lawyer Kingsley Mallan, wanted the tribunal to allow his client to inspect materials used for the March 18th governorship election.

INEC lawyer Elekwa Oyemauche in his submission, pointed out that the issues in all the applicants applications are the same and therefore should be consolidated to save the tribunal’s time.

Ruling, the tribunal granted the prayers in the parties applications and ordered that INEC should give them access to jointly inspect the materials.