On Monday, the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, rejected a request to enable televised coverage of its daily hearings regarding petitions attempting to overturn the results of the 2023 presidential election.
The application, which was presented to the five-member panel by the two main candidates contesting the results of the February 25 presidential election, was rejected as lacking merit by Justice Haruna Tsammani’s panel.
The court held that no regulatory framework or policy direction, permitted it to grant such application.
According to their conclusion, permitting cameras in courtrooms is a significant judicial policy that needs to be protected by the law.
“The court can only be guided and act in accordance with the practice directions and procedures approved by the President of the Court of Appeal.
“We cannot permit a situation that may lead to dramatization of our proceedings,” Justice Tsammani held.
Besides, the court held that the request was not part of any relief in the petitions before it, saying it was merely hinged on sentimental claim that it would benefit the electorates.
It maintained that the petitioners failed to establish how televising the proceedings would advance their case, adding that such live broadcast would not have any utilitarian value to add to the determination of the petitions.
Whereas it was a former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who came second in the election, that initially made the request for a live coverage, subsequently, candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, threw his weight behind the demand for live broadcast of proceedings of the court on the petitions.
The duo, through their lead lawyers, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, and Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, maintained that petitions they lodged to query the declaration of the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as winner of the election, was “a matter of monumental national concern and public interest”.
They argued that the case involved the interest of citizens and electorates in the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, who he said voted and participated in the presidential poll.
Atiku and the PDP insisted that their case against Tinubu, being a unique electoral dispute with a peculiar constitutional dimension, they said it was a matter of public interest in which millions of Nigerian citizens and voters are stakeholders, with the constitutional right to be part of the proceedings.
They specifically applied for; “An order, directing the Court’s Registry and the parties on modalities for admission of Media Practitioners and their Equipments into the courtroom”.
“With the huge and tremendous technological advances and developments in Nigeria and beyond, including the current trend by this Honourable Court towards embracing electronic procedures, virtual hearing and electronic filing, a departure from the Rules to allow a regulated televising of the proceedings in this matter is in consonance with the maxim that justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.
