THE Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has filed an 18-ground notice of appeal at the Kwara State division of the Appeal Court, Ilorin, asking the court to set aside the ruling of the governorship election tribunal.The tribunal dismissed the petition of ACN's Mohammed Dele Belgore (SAN) and upheld the election of Governor Abdulfattah Ahmed.The notice of appeal, dated November 25 and signed by ACN's team of lawyers led by legal luminary Ebun Sofunde (SAN), said the tribunal erred in law in upholding the objections of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that ACN pleaded vague averments upon which no evidence could be led.The ACN insists that the position of the law, backed by several authorities, is that a party that complains of vague or generic pleadings should request further and better particulars, failing which 'he shall be taken to require no further particulars or direction and is stopped from complaining with any alleged vague or general nature of the pleadings'.ACN, which said its petition rested squarely on documentary evidence, also argued that the trial court acted strangely and against the law when it pronounced all the several thousands of documents tendered as inadmissible simply because the INEC officer did not sign them in long-hand.The party said the position of the court was strange because none of the respondents, including INEC and the PDP, challenged the authenticity of those documents, which the tribunal itself admitted had an engraved signature of the officer, the date of certification and evidence that they were Certified True Copies (CTCs).The ACN is also asking the appeal court to determine whether the tribunal acted rightly in failing to act on its own finding, after it ordered a recount of the ballot papers used in the disputed areas, that there were indeed at least 21,192 bogus, non-existent votes in the result INEC declared.The notice read in part: 'The contention of the petitioners was that there was an excess of 21,192 ballot papers recorded as having been used in the Forms EC8As tendered in evidence. Having accepted that there was the discrepancy alleged, the tribunal ought to have acted on that finding to hold that the integrity of the election in the affected areas had been severely impugned'.The party also said the tribunal erred in law 'in holding that it was not enough for the petitioners to tender the public documents that were relied upon but that they ought to have gone further to speak to them and, therefore, failing to give full and proper effect to them. Given the (statutory) nature of the documents and their contents, the tribunal was entitled to act on them once they were tendered.'In any event the documents were spoken to by evidence called both in-chief and through cross-examination, as well as in the written submissions'.
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