The Ondo state governor, Olusegun Mimiko has described as embarrassing, the Saturday October 24th judgement of the Rivers state election tribunal which nullified the election of Nyesom Wike as governor of the state. Mimiko gave his reaction to the judgement while speaking with journalist in Akure, the Ondo state capital yesterday October 26th.
“Our mindset is that tribunal judgment can go either way, but the Rivers own is particularly embarrassing. We all know the circumstances surrounding the Rivers State tribunal. You recall that for unjustifiable cause, that tribunal was not allowed to sit in Port Harcourt, it was taken to Abuja.
Somewhere along the line, the chairman of the Tribunal got changed.
Now, we challenge the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and it has gotten to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will give judgment in the next few days. The Abuja Tribunal continues to sit. On Thursday, nine written addresses were adopted.
The adoption of the written addresses were done on 1pm on Thursday. In the course of that trial, the litigants – both plaintiffs and defendants – called more than 100 witnesses, documents that were presented as exhibits were more than 1,000.
We are talking of more than 100 witnesses and 1,000 documents were admitted, we are talking of nine written addresses. None of the addresses were less than 40 pages. The adoption was on Thursday, around 1pm and Friday around 2pm, barely under 24 hours, notice had been issued that judgment was ready, that judgment was given on Saturday.
This sequence and turn of event assault the sensibilities of lawyers that really believe in justice.”he said