Abuja-The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA),  Mr. Joseph Daudu (SAN),  on Tuesday urged election petitions  tribunal judges to be fair in the dispensation of justice.
He made the appeal at a day seminar organised by the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) in Abuja.

“The significance of this seminar is to understand the principles and philosophy behind election dispute resolution and to achieve post-election harmony in the country,” Daudu stated.

Daudu urged the judges to diligently ensure that all legal disputes were disposed within  short time, to enable the country move forward, even as he challenged the Disputes Resolution Agency (DRA) to create the enabling environment for peaceful resolution of election cases.

According to him, DRA had a very critical role to play in resolving election matters.

Earlier, another legal luminary, Mr Adebayo Adenipekun (SAN), had cautioned all the counsel handling election petitions to note that trial of election petitions was trial by pleadings.

 “The settled law is that parties are bound by their pleadings and the court is not permitted to make a case for the parties except on pleadings.

“It is, therefore, imperative that all material facts needed to prove the case must be put in at the time of drafting the pleadings,” Adenipekun stated in his paper, entitled, “Initiating Election Petition and other Preliminaries”.

He said the success of the elections held a new integrity for  the electoral process just as he commended the Independent National Electoral Commission on the conduct of the just-concluded general elections.