Presidential Tribunal as Mr Peter Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party, LP, who claimed that the 2023 presidential election was rigged, presented 136 more documents before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, on Friday.
The exhibits, which were admitted as evidence by a five-member panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, included presidential election results from six federation states.
Adamawa, Bayelsa, Oyo, Edo, Lagos, and Akwa Ibom were the states to whom the court acknowledged their presidential election results contained in Forms EC8A.
Obi, who finished third in the presidential race, told the court that the results he presented were certified authentic copies obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission or INEC.
He tendered election results from 115 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Rivers, Niger, Benue, Cross River, Osun, and Ekiti on Thursday.
The petitioners received permission from the court to submit new results from six LGAs in Rivers State, which were acknowledged and labelled as Exhibits PB 16 to PB 21 at the resumed proceedings on Friday.
However, INEC said that the additional Rivers State results were “strange” to it.
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Mr Kemi Pinhero, SAN, who led INEC’s legal team, informed the court that the Commission would state its reasons for opposing the results’ acceptance in its final written address.
Similarly, counsel for President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN, as well as counsel for the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, objected to the results being admitted into evidence.
The responders stated that they would save their reasons for disagreeing with the election results in their final written address.
Following that, Obi and the LP presented to the court new results from Bida LGA in Niger State, which were allowed as Exhibit PE 24.
Whereas the court admitted results from 21 LGAs in Adamawa state and labelled them Exhibits PH 1 to PH 21, it also admitted presidential election results from 8 LGAs in Bayelsa state and labelled them Exhibits PJ 1 to PJ 8.
The court accepted results from 31 LGAs in Oyo as Exhibits PK 1 – PK 31, while results from 18 LGAs in Edo state were marked as Exhibits PL 1 – PL 18.
The petitioners also presented presidential election results from 20 LGAs in Lagos state, which were acknowledged as Exhibits PM 1 – PM 20, as well as results from 31 LGAs in Akwa Ibom state, which were admitted as Exhibits PN 1 – PN 31.
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Although Obi won the presidential election in Lagos state, he claimed in his appeal that there was widespread voter suppression in the state and that electorate who would have voted for him were openly harassed or intimidated.
Meanwhile, the Justice Tsammani-led panel unanimously reversed its previous decision to resume the hearing on Saturday.
Even though the lead counsel for the petitioners, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, stated that his team was prepared to appear before the court on Saturday, lawyers for all of the respondents took turns begging the court to postpone further hearings of the matter until the next Monday, a request the panel granted.
Obi and the LP have already made it known that they plan to call a total of 50 witnesses.
Obi specifically claims in the joint petition he filed with the LP that President Tinubu was not the legitimate victor of the election.
President Tinubu was not eligible to run for president, according to the petitioners in CA/PEPC/03/2023.
According to the petitioners, Tinubu’s running mate, Shettima, was still the APC’s nominated candidate for the Borno Central Senatorial race when he became the Vice Presidential candidate.
The petitioners also disputed Tinubu’s eligibility to run for president, asserting that he had previously been charged with dishonesty and drug trafficking and fined $460,000 by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in Case No: 93C 4483.
The petitioners claimed that because INEC disregarded its regulations and guidelines and engaged in fraudulent practices, the election was invalidated and in breach of the Electoral Act of 2022.
The Petitioners contended that, during the presidential election, the electoral body was legally compelled to prescribe and deploy technological equipment for the accreditation, verification, continuation, and authentication of voters and their personal information.
As a result, they are asking the court to declare, among other things, that all votes cast for Tinubu and the APC were squandered as a result of his ineligibility/disqualification.
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