![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Ekweremadu\u2019s-election-What-happened-at-Tribunal-on-Wednesday.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMr Z. Akubo, counsel to the petitioner, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), disclosed this during the pre-hearing session of the tribunal on Wednesday in Enugu.<\/p>\n
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ibekaku-Nwagwu is challenging the declaration by INEC of Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as winner of the Feb. 9 Enugu West Senatorial election.<\/p>\n
Akubo said that the petitioners may still be compelled to subpoena more witnesses depending on the circumstances of the hearing.<\/p>\n
He requested that five minutes be allotted to each of the general witnesses and 15 minutes to the star and expert witnesses for the adoption of their testimonies.<\/p>\n
The counsel said that the petitioners had not filed issues for determination in the petition, adding that they would do so in due course.<\/p>\n
In her submission, Mrs Justina Offiah (SAN), counsel to Ekweremadu, said that the respondent would be presenting 36 witnesses to prove his case.<\/p>\n
Offiah said that the respondent might or might not call all his witnesses depending on the witnesses presented by the petitioners.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur aim is to match the petitioners witness by witness,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The senior advocate said that the first respondent would reject any document that did not pass the admissibility test.<\/p>\n
Counsels to the PDP and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Messrs A. I. Ani (SAN) and Emeka Udeogba respectively, said they would present six witnesses each.<\/p>\n
However, Udeogba said that INEC might be compelled to subpoena more witnesses depending on the circumstances.<\/p>\n
The Chairman of the tribunal, Justice Haruna Kereng, announced adjournment of its sitting until May 23 for commencement of hearing.<\/p>\n
The tribunal had prior to the pre-hearing session heard an application by the first respondent for the striking out of certain paragraphs in the petition.<\/p>\n
Offiah then told the tribunal that such paragraphs raised serious criminal allegations of falsification of figures, ballot box snatching and stuffing, but did not name the alleged perpetrators.<\/p>\n
The counsel said that having only INEC as a respondent was not sufficient enough to defend the alleged crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the alleged perpetrators are not mentioned in the petition, then the allegations need not go on trial. We urge the tribunal to strike out those offensive paragraphs,\u201d Offiah said.<\/p>\n
However, counsel to the petitioners\/respondents told the tribunal that they had filed a counter-affidavit based on Section 285 (8) of the Nigerian Constitution and urged the tribunal to strike out the application.<\/p>\n
The tribunal had however reserved ruling on the application.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 42 witnesses will testify against the victory of Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, in the last National Assembly election, in a petition before the National\/State Assembly Elections Petition Tribunal in Enugu. Mr Z. Akubo, counsel to the petitioner, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), disclosed this during the pre-hearing session […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/117548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}