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<\/p>\nNAN reports that Lawani, a Benue South Senatorial District candidate on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is challenging the return of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Abba Moro as the winner of the election.<\/p>\n
Joined in the matter were the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).<\/p>\n
At the resumption of pre-hearing on Friday, Lawani\u2019s counsel, Mr Sunday Okpare urged the tribunal to grant his client leave to amend his petition.<\/p>\n
The application sought to amend Lawani\u2019s petition, list of documents to be relied on and deemed same as properly filed and served.<\/p>\n
However, counsel to Moro, Mr Kenneth Ikonne opposed the application, arguing that amending the petition would have adverse effect on his reply.<\/p>\n
Ikonne submitted that time allowed for filing of election petition was 21 days and since that time had elapsed, the petitioner could not come before the tribunal to make substantial amendment to his petition to the extent of including new pleadings and reliefs.<\/p>\n
Ikonne, therefore, urged the tribunal to dismiss the application.<\/p>\n
Ruling on the application, Justice C. M. Ken-Eze agreed with the submissions of Ikonne that the petitioner\u2019s proposed amendment would introduce substantial issues to the petition.<\/p>\n
Ken-Eze held that the petitioner\u2019s proposed amendment amounted to substantial departure from the petition, noting that in the original petition, four reliefs were sought while in the proposed amendment, five new reliefs were added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe petitioner\u2019s application is a total departure from the original petition and cannot be accommodated by the tribunal especially as issues have already been joined.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe application is incompetent for introducing new things and is contrary to the provision of the Electoral Act and is hereby dismissed,\u201d Ken-Eze said.<\/p>\n
She then adjourned the matter to May 24, for pre-hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Makurdi, on Friday dismissed application by former Deputy Governor of Benue, Mr Stephen Lawani seeking to amend his petition before it. NAN reports that Lawani, a Benue South Senatorial District candidate on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is challenging the return of the Peoples […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118346,"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":[6325,29,35,58,12077],"class_list":["post-118345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-abba-moro","tag-apc","tag-benue","tag-pdp","tag-stephen-lawani"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118345","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=118345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/118346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}