The National Assembly and Legislative Houses Election petition panel sitting in Awka, Anambra State, this morning struck out the petition of Prof. Dora Akunyili challenging the April 2011 election of Dr. Chris Ngige as the Senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial Zone.
The National Assembly and Legislative Houses Election petition panel sitting in Awka, Anambra State, this morning struck out the petition of Prof. Dora Akunyili challenging the April 2011 election of Dr. Chris Ngige as the Senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial Zone.
The action is sequel to an application by the counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), O. J. Nnadi, seeking an order to dismiss the petition of the former Minister of Information following her failure to file a mandatory statutory form called TF 008. The form contains questions which the petitioner and other parties in the Petition must individually answer before the case can proceed to the pre-hearing stage.
In the ruling, which was delivered by the panel chairperson, Justice P. O Onajite-Kuejubola, and concurred by Justices Udu-Eze and Mukthar respectively, the tribunal found that the form which Akunyili attached to her counter-affidavit and which was purported to have been filed on the 7th of July 2011 was “spurious and worthless”.
The judge held that by Akunyili’s failure to file the form as required by the Rules of the tribunal, the tribunal had been deprived of the information with which to conduct the pre-hearing session.
She further found, as a fact, that the form in question was not in the Tribunal file, a clear indication of its non-filing. Justice Onajite-Kuejubola held further that the story put forward by Prof. Akunyili’s legal team that their own copy of the form was removed by unknown persons in their case file at Cosmilla Hotel, Awka, was not believable.
Although the Tribunal held that the Form TF 008 attached to Akunyili’s petition is "worthless," it declined the invitation by Ngige’s legal team for the Police and the State Security Service to be brought in to investigate the genuineness of the document. The Tribunal advised that Ngige’s legal team is at liberty to invite the Police or SSS to investigate the genuineness of the document.
Consequently, the Tribunal held that it had lost the jurisdiction to continue with the hearing of the petition with the consequence that the petition ought to be struck out pursuant to paragraph 18(ii)(a) of the 1st schedule of Electoral Act 2010. It accordingly struck out the petition.
Obiora Obianwu, counsel to Akunyili, has already indicated that the decision will be challenged on appeal.
Copies of forged Form TF 008 
