Court accepts final presidential election results as exhibits in Obi’s petition challenging Tinubu’s victory.
In a renewed effort to justify his request for the nullification of President Bola Tinubu’s election as the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last presidential election, Peter Obi tendered the collated final presidential election results used in declaring Tinubu the winner of the election on Wednesday.
The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) accepted the final result without objections from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shetima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the petition’s four respondents.
Aside from not objecting to the final presidential election results contained in form EC8DA, the four respondents also did not object to the vital documents being read in open Court.
Obi and the Labour Party LP presented the documents, along with several exhibits, to establish the petition against Tinubu’s election through their lawyer, Professor Paul Ananaba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN.
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Surprisingly, despite strongly opposing the admission of collated election results from the ward, local government, and state levels, respondents accepted tendering the final result without reservation.
The collated results in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) contained in the electoral body’s forms EC8D were also tendered and admitted as exhibits during Wednesday’s proceedings.
At the PEPC hearing on his petition against Tinubu, Obi, who was physically present in court to witness proceedings, shifted his battle from ward-collated election results to local government election results and state-collated election results before tendering the final results as exhibits in aid of his petition.
Local government results are contained in forms EC8C used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the February 25 presidential election.
Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, and Ondo are among the 13 states where the ward collated results were tendered and admitted as exhibits.
Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Ekiti, and Delta are the remaining states.
Obi presented results from 8 Bayelsa local government areas, 23 in Benue, 18 in Cross River, 10 in Ebonyi, 18 in Edo, 20 in Lagos, and 25 in Niger State.
Ondo has 18, Oyo has 33, Rivers has 23, Sokoto has 23, Ekiti has 16, and Delta has 25.
Despite the fact that INEC, Tinubu, Kashim Shetima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) filed objections to the admission of the collated results, the Presiding Justice of the Court, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, admitted them as exhibits in favour of Obi and the Labour Party.
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Meanwhile, the Court’s Chairman, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, has set June 8 as the date for the petition’s continuation hearing.
Later, Obi’s counsel, Professor Paul Ananaba, told reporters that the coast is now clear for his clients to begin calling witnesses to testify in order to establish the petition.
The law professor revealed that the witnesses will go through the admitted documents one by one to show the court where electoral fraud occurred during the February 25 presidential election.
