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Plateau Guber Tribunal: PDP witnesses
threaten with instant Dead, Says Ozekhome
By
LovinsYakubu
July,
11,2019
An
astonishing revelation was made on Thursday morning at the on-going Plateau
state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting at west of mines Jos by
Counsel to Jeremiah Timbut Useni ,Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) that their
witnesses were threatened with instant dead if they insisted on testifying for
Useni.
Useni is at
the Tribunal challenging the declaration of Rt. Hon Simon Bako Lalong as the
winner of the March 23, Governorship election in the state by the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The Tribunal
on Wednesday upheld the submission of respondents’ counsels that the
adjournment sought by petitioners counsel was unwarranted and a tactics to
delayed proceedings and expressed displeasure with petitioners to call
witnesses after presenting series of documents on Tuesday and Wednesday
stressing that the act of the petitioners was tantamount to wasting the time of
Tribunal and that of the people of Plateau state who are eager to know its
outcome.
However,
Ozekhome told the Tribunal this morning that its ruling yesterday prompted him
to open up on a precarious situation the petitioners had been battling with of
recent.
"My Lords,
I want it to be on record because of the ruling yesterday while I wasn't here
.My Lords, it is not everything you see that you tell the Tribunal but the
ruling yesterday shows that we are not serious .We had 15 witnesses yesterday
that had come from various places to testify and they told us that they were
been threatened with instant dead if they insist on testifying" said
Ozekhome.
According to
the learned silk, the said witnesses also claimed that they were seriously warned
to remain in Jos and not make the mistake of going back to their original
aboard should they insisted and went ahead to testify in favour of the
petitioners otherwise, the 2015 treatment that was meted out on some witnesses
in Jos North would be repeated on them.
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| counsels at the Tribunal on Thursday morning |
Ozekhome
made it clear that he wasn't challenging the ruling of the tribunal yesterday
and therefore, was not in anywhere distracting or wasting the precision's time
of the tribunal. According to him, the pre-hearing conference report is very
clear to the effect that any day a party failed to call a witness it would be
counted against that party.
In their
responses however, Pius Akubo (SAN) and Garba Pwul (SAN) all described
Ozekhome’s allegation as frivolous
“To make
this allegation from the Bar is serious but I want my Lords to take it with a pinch
of salt. If they are not ready to call more witnesses, they should close their
case” said Akubo. Pwul on the other hand, told the tribunal that there has never
been any case of attack on any PDP member in Jos North in 2015.
My Lords, I
live in Jos North and I want to say that nothing like that happened in 2015.
Ozekhome
made it clear that he has to bring this to the attention of the tribunal so as
to proved that they were not deliberately wasting time as the respondents
wanted the tribunal to believed. The SAN further went ahead to tender more
documents and call more witnesses who all complained on issues bordering on
over voting and mutilation of voters card and results. Hearing continues
tomorrow.
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