Justice Monica Dongban-Mesem, President of the Court of Appeal, has formed two new panels to hear complaints arising from the National and State Houses of Assembly elections in Lagos.
This could be related to the overwhelming number of petitions submitted before the Lagos Election Tribunal.
Our judiciary correspondent, Shola Soyele, who received this information at the Lagos Tribunal secretariat in Ikeja today, also learned that the new panels, designated Panel 2 and 3, will begin meeting next week at the State High Court, which is located in Tafawa Balewa Square on Lagos Island.
Panel 1 will continue to meet at the Rosaline Omotoso Courthouse in Ikeja, alongside the sole panel hearing petitions on the governorship elections.
At the moment, parties before the tribunal are still filing relevant pre-hearing applications and the tribunal is expected to commence hearing of those applications next week.
At the close of receipt of petitions on April 9th, the Lagos State Governorship, National and State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal had received a total of 48 petitions in respect of the 2023 elections held on February 25 and March 11.
A breakdown of the petitions as obtained from the Secretariat showed that 4 petitions were filed to challenge the governorship elections held in the state on March 11, 2023.
Those who filed are the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and it’s candidate, Abdul-Azeez Adediran, as well as the Labour Party (LP) governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who filed as the sole petitioner.
Others are the Allied People’s Movement (APM) and the Action People’s Party (APP).
The Tribunal also received 5 Petitions from five Senatorial candidates and 26 Petitions from House of Representatives candidates that lost during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections, while a total of 13 petitions were filed to challenge the elections into the State House of Assembly.