Presidential election petition: Peter Obi closes case against Tinubu

 

Peter Obi and his Labour Party, LP, on Friday closed their petition before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) challenging the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Obi and LP are complainants in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, challenging the 2023 general election which brought Tinubu to power as Nigeria president on May 29.

Respondents in the petition are the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and All Progressives Congress (APC).

The petitioners were given three weeks to prove their case against the respondents before the court.

They informed the court that they would call fifty witnesses to prove their case, but as they were closing on Friday, they called only thirteen witnesses.

Earlier, Counsel to the petitioners, Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, told the court that their twelfth witness, Yunusa Tanko, was in court to be cross-examined by the respondents.

Counsel to the respondents are Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, for INEC, Wole Olanipakun, SAN, for Tinubu and Shettima, while Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, represented the APC.

The twelfth witness (PW12) was Yunusa Tanko, a member of LP Situation Room, who testified, and some documents were tendered through him.

Being cross-examined by INEC, the witness informed the court that the results given to them were mutilated and not readable.

When asked by Olanipekun how many party agents his party had during the election, he said over 130,000, while there were 176,974 polling units through the federation.

Tanko was also asked what he wanted the court to do with the twelve states where LP won and what would happen to Atiku Abubakar, who was declared 2nd.

He said that he was challenging the entire results of the election because, after four months of the election, the results are still being downloaded from the IreV.

When asked by Fagbemi why he didn’t provide the number of unlawful votes, he claimed that their expert had already given evidence on the number of disputed votes.

The respondents tendered through the witness judgments of the Federal High Court, with FHC/ABJ/1454/2022, delivered on January 23, 2023, concerning LP vs INEC.

Peter Yari, PW 13, an ad-hoc staff of INEC, also gave his evidence in court.

Counsel for the petitioners, Uzoukwu, after the testimony of PW13, informed the court that they are closing their case.

The respondents prayed the court to give them till next week to go home and celebrate the upcoming Sallah with their families and come back by July 3 to open their case.

The five-member panel presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani adjourned until July 3 for the respondents to open their case, NAN reports.