Lawyer Warns On April Polls

A lawyer, Mr. Max Ogar, has expressed concern about the spate of pre-election litigations “which may pose serious threat to the conduct of the April general elections”.

Ogar told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja that the large number of election related cases currently before the courts were likely to result in a high number of post-election cases.

He observed that the trend was capable of diverting INEC’s attention from discharging its mandate of conducting credible elections.

The lawyer added that the excess litigations would not only over burden the courts, but also cause delays in the resolution of non-election matters already pending in the courts.

“INEC may be distracted from the primary assignment it has to do, which is the conduct of elections.

“Post-election litigation will come up when our courts, probably, may not have been able to resolve the pre-election litigations conclusively.

“You now would have an addition of pre-election litigations and post-election litigations wearying on the courts, so other cases pending before our courts would ultimately suffer.

“INEC has no choice but to comply with orders of the court, then at that point, logistic problems would arise,” he said.

Ogar, who is also a social analyst, said the Abuja Federal High Court judgment barring INEC from conducting governorship elections in five states during the April polls, was “legally sound and correct”.

He said going by the judgment, governorship elections would be held on different dates in the affected states, thereby allowing INEC to effectively monitor the elections.