APC's failure to pay N700 stalls Tribunal proceedings

DAILY POST

The commencement of pretrial session in the ongoing petition filed by All Progressives Congress, APC, challenging the victory of Kano Governor, Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP, was stalled on Tuesday.

This is owing to the failure of the Petitioner’s counsel to effect a mandatory fee.

The APC lead counsel, Nuraini Jimoh, SAN, told the Tribunal that failure of the network prevented them from generating REMITA and paying the Federal Government the sum of N700.

He told the court that they faced a slight hitch to access the Network and generate REMITA to pay and upload the pretrial session forms.

He stressed, “My Lords there was a serious technical problem to access and generate REMITA. The Secretary of the Tribunal contacted Headquarters over the technical issue being encountered by the petitioner but they said we will not continue until the process is completed electronically.”

Nuraini Jimoh told the court that the petitioner has 7 days within which to file the pretrial forms, explaining that they are within time.

The counsel prayed for an adjournment to enable the petitioner to file their pretrial forms.

In the Petition, the APC is praying the tribunal to declare that Abba Yusuf was not qualified  to contest the election, arguing that his name was not in the list of members of NNPP sent to INEC.

APC is also praying the Tribunal to declare that NNPP did not win the election with the majority of lawful votes because some of the votes cast for them were invalid and if removed from their scores, APC will have the highest number of votes.