The All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate in the February 25 presidential election, Bola Tinubu, on Monday opposed the consolidating of the petitions as raised by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
At the resumed hearing to consider the matter of consolidation, counsels to Tinubu, Akin Olujimi (SAN), and the APC, Charles Edosomwa (SAN), opposed the move to consolidate the three different petitions.
They insisted that merging all the petitions would affect their ability to effectively defend all the issues raised by the petitioners.
The senior lawyers maintained that the petitioners did not only raise various issues, but were seeking different reliefs.
Shehu Abubakar announced appearance for the Allied People’s Party (APM) and Kenny Pinhero (SAN) represented the Independent National Electoral Court (INEC).
Abubakar said the party would not be opposed to the consolidation of the petition and counsel to INEC said that he was neither in support nor opposition and left the decision at the discretion of the PEPC.
The APC in opposing the application for consolidation of the petition said the interest of justice would not be served.
The party held that this was because the issues raised were different and because of the variance of pleadings.
“The justice factor is a good reason for your lordships not to consolidate the petition. The second respondent is afraid of being prejudiced,” Edosomwa said.
Olujimi submitted that the third and fourth respondents also opposed the consolidation of the petitions.
He adopted the submissions of counsel to the second respondent, insisting that though paragraph 50 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act, 2022 donated an in built discretion to the court, however, he argued that such discretion was not mandatory.
“The interest of justice should be a restraint on the power of court to exercise discretion in granting consolidation. The issue canvassed in each of the petitions vary,” Olujimi said.
For the fifth respondent, Rowland Otaru adopted the submissions of counsel for the second to fourth respondents.
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