On Wednesday, the final results for the 36 states of the union and the Federal Capital Territory were tendered in evidence by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
In support of the petition at the Presidential Election Petition Court protesting the results of the February 25 elections, Paul Annanaba, SAN, submitted the national document known as Form EC8D(a) on behalf of the party and Obi.
Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress was declared the winner of the presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission. The LP and its candidate, Peter Obi, are contesting the manner in which the election was conducted.
The lawsuit names INEC, Tinubu, Kassim Shettima, the vice president, and the APC as the first through fourth respondents.
The respondents all consented on Wednesday to the presentation of the national results for all the states and the FCT through their legal representatives.
The respondents made no objections, so the five-person PEPC panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani accepted the national document as proof in the petition filed by Obi.
In a related development, the petitioners submitted 13 form EC8Cs from the following states as evidence in support of their petition opposing Tinubu’s return: Bayelsa, Benue, Cross-River, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, Ondo, Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Ekiti, and Delta.
Results of local government elections are compiled using the form EC8C. This form receives the results reported at the ward level. However, every respondent raised an objection to the form EC8Cs’ admissibility through their solicitors. They advised the court that they would provide justifications for their objections in their final written submissions.
The forms were nonetheless accepted as evidence by the court and designated as exhibits. Following that, it postponed more hearings on the petition until Thursday, June 8, 2023.
opposition to the PDP’s summoned witness
Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate in the most recent election, was the first witness called under oath on Wednesday at the Presidential Election Petition Court.
In a petition with the designation CA/PEPC/05/2023, Tinubu’s election as president is being contested by Atiku and the PDP.
The petitioners are scheduled to call their first subpoenaed witness, an ad hoc employee of the Independent National Electoral Commission, at the resumed hearing, according to counsel for the PDP, Chris Uche, SAN.
Counsel for the case’s respondents, INEC, Tinubu, and the APC, objected to the witness’ testimony, though.
Just as the witness was about to take his oath after entering the witness box, INEC’s legal representative, A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, stood up and objected to the witness being heard.
He told the court that he had just received the witness’s statement this morning and would need to study it in order to conduct an exhaustive cross-examination.
Akin Olujimi SAN, the attorney for Tinubu, and Lateef Fagbemi SAN, the attorney for the APC, both held the same opinion and opposed the petitioners’ action.
Uche retorted that the witness’s statement was not odd enough to call for an adjournment, and this was his main point.
He begged the court to permit at least one of the summoned witnesses to wisely use their time.
In order to give respondents time to review the documents and effectively cross-examine the first subpoenaed witness, Justice Tsammani, the chairman of the five-person PEPC panel, proposed to adjourn the trial for 30 minutes.
The witness, however, “is said to be an Ad-hoc staff of the Commission,” and as such, he would have to go and look at INEC’s records to enable him to prepare properly. As a result, the witness cannot be taken on Wednesday, insisted INEC counsel.
Uche requested that the court adjourn until tomorrow, June 8, so that the three subpoenaed witnesses could be called after the respondents’ claims.
Ndubuisi Nwobu, the PDP chairman for Anambra, had already been called as the PDP and Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify in court.
The results were disputed at the lower levels before they reached the state level, the witness informed the court during cross-examination by counsel for the APC, Lateef Fagbemi SAN.
He further explained that they had no other options, so they had to compile the results.
He claimed that it was impossible to include every detail of what transpired when he was questioned under oath about whether he included that in his witness statement.
On June 8, 2023, the court will continue to hear arguments in the PDP and Atiku’s petition.
