Presidential election: Obi tenders more documents in petition against Tinubu

Hearing in the petition filed by the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi and his party against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s election continued on Wednesday before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja with the petitioners calling additional three witnesses and tendering of more documents in aid of their joint petition.

At the resumed hearing of the petition numbered, CA/PEPC/03/2023, lead counsel to the petitioners, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN) called the 8th witness of the petitioners, Dr Chubuike Ugwuoke, a cyber security expert, who adopted his statement on oath deposed to on June 21 as his evidence in the matter.

Documents tendered as evidence through the witness include latter data and a press statement by INEC on alleged plot to abandon electronic transmission of polling unit results to its portal.

The respondents, INEC, Tinubu, Vice–President Kashim Shettima and the APC had earlier objected to the adoption of the witness statement on oath as well as the admissibility of the other document and promised to give their reasons at the final address stage.

The court, however, admitted the documents and marked them as exhibits and held that cross-examination of the witness by the respondents will be done on Thursday.

Onoja Oloko Sunday and Kefas Iya who are the 9th and 10th witnesses for the petitioners adopted their witness statements on oath. They both said the election process went on well until the electronic transmission of the polling units’ election results to INEC viewing portal when the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machine failed.

After the evidence of the witnesses, the petitioners’ counsel, Peter Afoba (SAN) tendered some sensitive documents provided by INEC.

The documents are Certified True Copies (CTCs) of a list of the total number of registered voters and Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) for 32 states of the Federation, Certificate of compliance in respect of Edo, which only INEC did not object to its admissibility but the rest respondents urged the court not to admit it and promised to adduce their reasons at the final address stage.

Other documents tendered by the petitioners on Wednesday include CTCs of supplementary I-ReV reports in respect of three local government areas of Benue state, supplementary I-ReV reports for two local government areas of Cross River state, I-ReV reports in respect of 13 Local government areas of Lagos state and CTCs of supplementary I-Rev report for one local government area of Gombe.

At the end of the day’s proceedings, the court adjourned till Thursday, July 22 by 2 pm for further hearing.

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