The Lagos Governorship election petition tribunal today ran into what could best be described as self-set landmines, by striking out Jandor/PDP application to grant all parties, including the court access to the WAEC back-end server for forensic analysis, to further prove their case that the sudden appearance of Governor Sanwoolu’s purported 1981 WAEC result on the verification portal was fraudulently uploaded in 2023 after it has been verified to be null and void on same WAEC result verification website and submitted to the tribunal.
The Tribunal committed a blunder by striking out an application that has no opposition from all Respondents. The Responses filed by all Respondents were above the stipulated pages by law, as pointed out by counsel to Jandor/PDP CLEMENT ONWUENWUNOR, SAN who then asked the tribunal to strike them out. The tribunal, having realized that the prayer of Jandor/PDP’s lawyer is in tandem with the Law, granted it by striking out all responses filed against Jandor/PDP’s application, yet went ahead to strike Jandor/PDP’s application for forensic analysis of back end WAEC server which has no opposition at all.
These, according to Legal analysts are expensive errors, capable of worsening APC’s Sanwoolu’s case on the forged certificates issue. The petitioners who have in the same application expressed satisfaction on the matter so far, especially with the fact that the uploaded results, which were also attached to APC’s response to the Jandor/PDP petition were clearly different from the one in contention, said they needed the application to sail through, to expose an institution like WAEC who refuses to tender the same Babajide Sanwoolu certificate in court, but allowed its system to be compromised for the fraudulent upload.
Little wonder, WAEC who is never a party to Jandor/PDP petition suddenly appeared in court to file a motion to prevent the tribunal from investigating its server. Such a development according to Lawyers in court has created a basis for the upper court to smell a fowl play, just as Jandor/PDP Lawyer Clement Onwuenwunor asked, who is afraid of forensic analysis, even WAEC self to want to be investigated.
