A Senior Lawyer in Nigeria and a former Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Monday Ubani, on Thursday, revealed why the Supreme Court may not admit new evidence in the appeal of the judgement of the presidential election petition tribunal, News About Nigeria reports.
Ubani said this in reaction to the case of the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar against President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the United States.
The candidate of the PDP had requested the release of Tinubu’s certificate from the Chicago State University, CSU, with claims that the certificate the President submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC was not authentic.
Speaking on Atiku’s finding and the CSU confirmation under oath that the certificate that Tinubu issued to INEC was not from them on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, Ubani said that, the Supreme Court will not accept fresh evidence on the case.
In his words: “The Supreme Court will never, even the Court of Appeal will not admit fresh evidence because their job is to review the decision of the court below and not to now evaluate any evidence.
“They don’t take any evidence but there are special circumstances under which fresh evidence can be admitted by the appellate court and that ground is maybe by the time you file the case that evidence was not available.”
The senior lawyer however noted that it will take a lot from Atiku’s legal team to convince the Apex court to admit fresh evidence in the appeal of the election tribunal judgment, as its primary responsibility is to review the decision of the lower court.
“The issue of admissibility of fresh evidence is very critical, you must convince, and whoever is bringing it will be opposed by the other party. So, the court now exercises what is called discretionary power in either admitting or not allowing that fresh evidence to come in,” he said.
President Tinubu, through his lawyers, had resisted Atiku’s demand for his records to be released, but the US court eventually ordered CSU to release the President’s academic records to Atiku, who had told the court he needed them for his appeal in the Supreme Court.
The released records, which came first on October 3 and a deposition on Tuesday, revealed that the President’s 1979 CSU certificate he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was different from samples of the certificates the University issued to students that same year.
The CSU Registrar, Caleb Westberg under oath also said that the certificate was not issued by the school and its administrators, therefore, he cannot authenticate the certificate Tinubu presented to INEC.
