May 22, (THEWILL) – The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), sitting at the Appeal Court, Abuja, has dismissed applications seeking live televising of its ongoing proceedings.
A five-member panel of the court, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, in a ruling on Monday, said the applications lacked merit.
THEWILL reports that Atiku Abubakar, Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, had filed separate applications along with their parties, seeking live telecast of the PEPC Proceedings of their petitions filed against the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as the winner of the February 25 presidential poll.
Specifically, Atiku and the PDP had in a motion, insisted that their case against Tinubu, being a unique electoral dispute with a peculiar constitutional dimension, was a matter of public interest in which millions of Nigerian citizens and voters are stakeholders, with the constitutional right to be part of the proceedings.
“An integral part of the constitutional duty of the Court to hold proceedings in public is a discretion to allow public access to proceedings either physically or by electronic means.
“With the huge and tremendous technological advances and developments in Nigeria and beyond including the current trend by this Honourable Court towards embracing electronic procedures, virtual hearing, and electronic filing, a departure from the rules to allow a regulated televising of the proceedings in this matter aligns with the maxim that justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done.
“Televising court proceedings is not alien to this Honourable Court, and will enhance public confidence”, the petitioners argued.
While moving the application, lawyers to Atiku and Peter Obi have urged the court to grant their request in the interest of the public.
On their part, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), for INEC, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), for Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettma, and Adeniyi Akintola (SAN), for the APC, had in their various counter-affidavits, prayed the court to reject the application for being without merit and constituting a distraction to the court.
