The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja on Monday, admitted as exhibits, more certified true copies of polling unit results (INEC Form EC8As) tendered by the presidential candidate of the Labour party, Peter Obi, in eight states.
Again, the admissibility of the documents
were objected to by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Bola Tinubu,
Kashim Shettima and All Progressives Congress, APC.
Obi is disputing the presidential election
results declared in favor of President Tinubu in over 17 states and over 18,000
polling units with his petition also alleging overvoting in parts of the South
West.
Before today’s proceedings, Obi’s legal team
has tendered INEC Forms EC8As for 12 states, including Rivers, Niger, Adamawa,
Bayelsa, Oyo, Edo, Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Cross River and Ekiti states.
This is apart from five documents earlier
tendered as evidence, including a United States District Court judgement on
Tinubu’s forfeiture of 460,000 US dollars allegedly linked to drug trafficking.
Objections were raised against all the
documents by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Tinubu, Kashim
Shettima and the All Progressives Congress.
At the resumption of sitting on Monday, Chief
Ben Anichebe SAN told the five-man panel of the court led by Justice Haruna
Tsammani, that he would be continuing with the tendering of INEC certified
Forms EC8As and some EC8C and EC8D (as they are available) for 8 states.
He went on to tender the INEC Form
EC8As(polling unit results) for Ebonyi state with 13 LGAs (Exhibit PP1- PP13),
Nasarawa (13 LGAs), Delta (25 LGAs), Kaduna State(23 LGAs), Imo (26 LGAs).
When Dr Mrs Valerie Azinge SAN took over from
Anichebe, she tendered CTC of polling unit results for Ondo (18 LGAs), Sokoto
(7 LGAs) and Kogi states(21 LGAs).
Lawyers representing the INEC, Tinubu,
Shettima and APC, opposed admission of the documents sought to be tendered,
saying the reasons for their opposition will be advanced before their final
address.
Justice Tsammani subsequently admitted the
polling unit results as evidence while marking them as Obi’s exhibits against
the respondents.
Earlier in the proceedings, a member of Obi’s
legal team, P.I. Ekweto SAN brought to the attention of the court to an
interrogatory application which they filed seeking certain answers from INEC
regarding accessing electoral materials.
He argued that for the petitioners’ case, the
issues and answers the team seek to extract from INEC are germane for the
trial.
“I am aware that before your pre-hearing
report on May 23 , before that date, the petitioners’ filed an application on
May 22 seeking leave to serve or deliver interrogatories on the first
respondent.
“There are indeed about 12 questions which we
indeed put down for them in that application.
“On the June 2, we filed an application for
my lord’s leave, to enable us hear the application outside the pre-hearing
session,” he said, praying the court to grant it urgently in view of the time
bound nature of the PEPC.
But counsels for INEC and Tinubu opposed the
application saying they are still within time to file their responses.
INEC counsel, A.B. Mahmoud described the
application as a waste of time.
The panel held it would rule on it after the
respondents have responded to the application.
The case was subsequently adjourned to
Tuesday for continuation of hearing.
Last week, Mr Obi tendered electoral
documents comprising result sheets from 12 states of the federation.
Despite winning the presidential election in
Lagos, Nasarawa, Delta, Ebonyi, Imo and other states, Mr Obi argued that votes
accruing to him were significantly suppressed in favour of Mr Tinubu.
Also, in aid of his case, the Labour Party
candidate has called one witness.
He had indicated his intention to call 50
witnesses and tender tons of electoral documents to substantiate his claims of
rampant fraud during the presidential election on 25 February.
Mr Obi has three weeks to prove his case
against INEC, Mr Tinubu and the APC respondents in the suit.
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