THE Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has canvassed a nine-month period within which election petitions should be completed, saying that it will be impossible for the petitions to be cleared before winners are sworn-in.

Its National President Mr. Joseph Daudu spoke Monday at a public hearing organised by the Senate Committee on the Review of the constitution.

According to him, the 150 days span being proposed by the new amendment cannot stand if the courts are to do justice to the petitions. 

He warned that rushing the process to conform to time limits could jeopardise fair hearing in such cases. 

Rather, Daudu suggested ways of accelerating the judicial process in respect of election petitions, stating that it is safer to err on the side of the statutes.

He said: “We should seek ways of accelerating the process because there are instances where there are over 1000 pages of documents involved, so time limit in such instances could jeopardise fair hearing”

"We must not forget that we are talking about human beings here and there is no way the human brain can absorb beyond certain capacity at a given time”.

The NBA President canvassed a revert to the status quo and for stakeholders to work out ways of strengthening the judiciary towards accelerated hearing of election petition cases.

He mooted the idea of establishing constitutional court, possibly by the next National Assembly.

Daudu backed the proposal seeking to stretch governorship election petitions to the Supreme Court as a result of conflicting judgments from the various divisions of the Court of Appeal in election petition cases.

But Mr. Femi Falana, who made a presentation on behalf of the National Conscience Party (NCP) disagreed with Daudu, pointing out that cases of conflicting pronouncements were not peculiar to the appellate courts.

According to him, the Supreme Court also made conflicting pronouncements in certain election petitions in the past. He warned that if the petitions were allowed to proceed to the Supreme Court, some of the cases might drag on for three years.

Falana called for definite punishment for politicians who violate the electoral process by way of carpet crossing while enjoying mandates obtained on the platform of another political party.