Appeal Court President Sets Up 2 More Panels To Hear Election Petitions In Lagos

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem has constituted two additional panels to sit over petitions arising from the National and State House of Assembly Elections in Lagos.

This information was disclosed to LEADERSHIP Sunday by a member of the secretariat of the Lagos Tribunal, who does want his name mentioned.

According to the source, the development was as a result of the large number of petitions filed by aggrieved parties before the Lagos Election Tribunal.

The new panels, dubbed Panel two and three will commence sitting next week at the State High Court, sitting at the Tafawa Balewa Square on Lagos Island.

While panel one will maintain its sitting at the Rosaline Omotoso Courthouse in Ikeja alongside the only panel sitting to hear the petitions on the Governorship elections.

At the moment, parties before the tribunal are still filing relevant pre hearing applications and the tribunal is expected to commence hearing of those applications next week.

At the end of the period for the submission of petitions on April 9th, the Lagos State Governorship, National and State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal had received a total of 48 petitions in respect of the 2023 elections held on Feb 25th and March 11.

A breakdown of the petitions as obtained from the Secretariat shows that 4 petitions were filed to challenge the governorship elections held in the state on March 11, 2023.

Those who filed are the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and its candidate, Abdul-Azeez Adediran, as well as the Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who filed as the sole petitioner.

Others are the Allied People’s Movement (APM) and the Action People’s Party (APP).

The Tribunal also received 5 Petitions from five Senatorial candidates and 26 Petitions from House of Representatives candidates that lost during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections.

A total of 13 petitions were filed to challenge the elections into the State  House of Assembly .