Governor Peter Mbah must appear before the Enugu State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal tomorrow, on Friday.
The Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, submitted an application through its attorney, Barr Alex Amujiogo, and received the order in response.
Elder Christopher Agu, a PRP candidate, is in court attempting to have Barr Peter Mbah’s declaration as the winner of the State’s March 18 governorship election overturned.
He further asserts that Mbah was unable to run for office because, among other things, a falsified National Youth Service Corps, or NYSC, discharge certificate was used.
Mbah was scheduled to appear in court as a subpoenaed witness, the PRP counsel Amujiogo informed the tribunal at the resumed hearing.
However, he claimed that the bailiff of the Tribunal’s evidence proved that it had been challenging to serve Mbah with the summons.
The Tribunal was then urged by Amujiogo in a motion to provide a substituted service of the summons on Mbah through his attorney.
The three respondents, INEC, Mbah, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, challenged the application on the grounds that it should have come through a motion accompanied by an affidavit during pre-trial proceedings, but the Tribunal overturned them.
Justice K. M. Akano, the panel’s chair, ruled that Mbah shall receive service of the subpoena through his attorney and appear before the tribunal on tomorrow, June 23, 2023.
Agu, the PRP candidate for governor during the election, had previously appeared as PW2 before the Tribunal.
A representative of the Director-General of the Corps, Barr. Aliu Muhammed, an official of the NYSC from the National Secretariat in Abuja, submitted an affidavit to the Tribunal stating that they were unable to submit the disclaimer the Corps had made against Mbah’s certificate due to a Federal High Abuja order.
Following the Tribunal’s session, PRP attorney Amujiogo told the media that “our PW2 (Christopher Agu) has already testified before the Honourable Tribunal and he has given a clearer picture, the synopsis of what transpired during the election, and we are urging the Tribunal to set aside the alleged result in favor of Peter Mbah, the Governor.
We had a subpoena issue against Barr Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, in which the Tribunal is requesting that he appear before it to address certain allegations made against him based on his NYSC certificate and other items.
“Surprisingly, he was not present in the Tribunal today, and the bailiff informed the Tribunal that he was invading service, he could not locate him, and the security would not permit him to serve Mbah the subpoena.
The Tribunal has now granted permission for the bailiff or myself to serve Mbah through his counsel so that he can appear before the Tribunal tomorrow, June 23, 2023, and address certain matters that are being brought against him. We have already served Mbah with the aforementioned subpoena through his attorney, Ik Onuoma, in court today.
Therefore, he must comply with the Tribunal’s summons and show up in person on Friday.
The Labour Party, LP’s gubernatorial candidate Barr Chijioke Edeoga’s case also came up before the Tribunal around this time.
After Edeoga’s pending application was moved before the Tribunal, the case was postponed so that the Tribunal could rule on it and also consider a pre-trial report.
The event was a continuation of the pre-hearing session, according to one of his attorneys, Barr Ifeanyi Ogenyi, who spoke with press following the session.
He states, “Pre-hearing began on June 16 and resumed today; the petitioners filed an application and a motion interrogatories, seeking responses from the second respondent, Mr. Peter Mbah.
“Interrogatory is like a legal questionnaire; it’s looking for answers.
“And some of the inquiries posed by the petitioners to Peter Mbah that we are pleading with the Tribunal to require him (Mbah) to respond to include: when and where did he serve? What was the date of his appointment as chief of staff? When did he become the state of Enugu’s finance commissioner? We need to know how long he was in service.
“We want to know the year and date he was appointed since in his pleading and in his reply to the petition he informed the Tribunal that he had previously served as the Chief of Staff to Governor Chimaroke Nnamani in 2003.
“We also want him to present before the Tribunal the letters appointing him as chief of staff and commissioner for finance under Chimaroke, as well as the records of his attendance at the institutions he claims to have attended.
“And on June 24, which is Saturday, the court is to issue a decision on whether he should answer those questions or not.”
“On their own side, they responded, “No. We won’t answer those questions since doing so would imply that we want him to establish our case for us.
“However, that is not the situation. According to the law, you must ask for more details when someone has made a voluntary disclosure of information;
“What we need are more details; he needs to give the Tribunal and us information on the concerns he brought up in his own pleadings.
“On the 24th, we will be here for a ruling and possibly the conclusion of the pre-hearing, and after the pre-hearing and report are issued, we can now proceed to the substantive hearing,” he continued.
