The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal claimed that it had disqualified 10 of the 13 witnesses that Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, had offered.
On Wednesday, Justice Haruna Tsammani, who was appointed to preside over the decision-making process for the substantive petition filed by Obi and LP, said thus.
Tsammani said that Obi called 13 witnesses, who gave testimony under the designations PW1 through PW13. She further noted that only three of the 13 witnesses’ sworn testimonies were included in the petition.
The Justice claimed that the final 10 witnesses had been subpoenaed and that their sworn witness statements had not yet been submitted when the hearing had already begun.
The Electoral Act of 2022, Section 137(7), and other requirements, according to Tsammani, require that every witness testimony taken under oath be submitted with the petition. Section 285 of the Nigerian Constitution and these provisions also require this.
According to him, an election petition’s content cannot be changed after the allotted 21 days have passed since the petition’s filing, according to Supreme Court precedent.
The Justice said that as the respondents would not have the chance to react after the prescribed window closed, no new statement under oath may be filed.
Tsammani claimed that although the petitioners were aware of the legal requirement for the filing of witness statements under oath, they still went ahead and presented 10 witnesses without the witness statements under oath that had previously been filed with the petition.
Details will follow…
