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.
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