Lagos poll: LP asks opposition parties to boycott tribunal

The Labour Party (LP) has called on opposition parties in Lagos to boycott the judicial tribunal set up to look into the complaints arising from the July 22 council poll.

In a statement on Monday, Biodun Popoola, chairman of the party in the state, described the tribunal as “arrange”.

On Friday, Olufunmilayo Atilade, chief judge of the state, inaugurated two tribunals to look into the complaints.

Atilade noted that the election remained inconclusive without providing a platform, as prescribed by the electoral act, for aggrieved parties or individuals to seek redress through a seamless legal process.

But Popola said the tribunal is “another calculated and deliberate plan to confer legitimacy on the atrocious, criminal proceedings of the July 22 charade called election which was intentionally designed to destabilize the hopes and aspiration of Lagosians”.

“We are in no doubt as to the fact that the purported setting up of tribunals by the chief judge of Lagos state who incidentally is a sister to the chairman of LASIEC (Lagos State “independent) electoral commission is nothing but a farce deliberately advocated to legitimize the kidnapping of candidates, stealing of ballot boxes and shooting and maiming of poor vulnerable candidates who participated against the “evil wind’ called APC,” he said in a statement.

“What would have been a historic affair in the life of our dear state with possibility of leaping over the juxtapositions of current paroxysm was made a wish wash melodrama by LASIEC beclouding ordinary human calculations.

“Indeed an exercise that should, by all means, have resulted into a glowing timeless light of progress for the state was thrown into the dust of political delinquency and criminality spiced up by gangsterism and absolute thuggery.

“We therefore believe that going before any of the judges assigned to each tribunal will definitely end up in futility because unfortunately, the progressive judges within the fold of the Lagos state judiciary were not enlisted for this noble cause for obvious reasons.

“Labour party therefore calls on all the ten other opposition political parties to boycott the tribunals as anything contrary will bring no good.

“For all intent and purposes, it is an arrangeeee election with arrangeeeee tribunals. Do not be fooled. This is an advocacy programmed to deceive the people, indeed an advocacy tailored towards morbidity even before it begins.”