A senior lawyer, Paul Erokoro, SAN, has said that tendering additional evidence at the Supreme Court is an uphill task that requires a great deal of effort.
According to him, the rules admitting fresh evidence at the Supreme Court are very stringent.
Erokoro stated this on Sunday in Abuja in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria.
He said the general rule is that additional evidence is not encouraged at the apex court.
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“The general rule is that additional evidence at the Supreme Court or any Court of Appeal is not encouraged at all, but that doesn’t mean that it is totally forbidden.
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“However, the rules for admitting it are very stringent.
“The first is that such evidence is going to be extremely material to the resolution of the issues in the case. That’s one of the hurdles to be crossed.
“The second hurdle is that such evidence could not have been procured during the trial at the trial court by reasonable diligence.
“So it is either the evidence was not available at the time of the trial or it could not, by any kind of due diligence or any reasonable effort, be made available.
“For evidence to be admissible at the Supreme Court or in any Court of Appeal, it has to, at a very minimum, satisfied those two conditions,” he said.
On whether there are provisions in the constitution allowing a party to tender additional evidence at the apex court, the senior lawyer noted, “Most of these rules are case laws and the Evidence Act does not specifically make these provisions.”
He stressed that it is only backed by the rules of the court.
“In the case of election petition, the constitution requires that the proceeding be concluded within 180 days at the election tribunal which, in the case of the presidential election, is the Court of Appeal.
“So the Court of Appeal which may have the power to admit additional evidence cannot have any jurisdiction if the jurisdiction of the trial court has expired.
“For instance, if a Court of Appeal has within six months to hear and conclude a presidential election matter and the six months have expired, even if the Supreme Court wanted to admit additional evidence, it doesn’t seem to me that it would be able to admit such evidence after the expiration of the six months,” he added.
According to him, if such evidence becomes available, it is very likely that it cannot be admitted on appeal.
“This is because it may not meet the jurisdictional requirement which is that a court which has jurisdiction to do it, will it have done it at this time?
“And if the period available for the trial court has expired, there is nothing the Appeal Court, in this case, the Supreme Court, can do,” he said.
Erokoro said that the Supreme Court or any appellate court in the country had 60 days within which to hear and conclude election matters.
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