For the second day running, hearing was yesterday stalled midway in the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the February 25 presidential poll, Atiku Abubakar.
The respondents to the PDP/Atiku petition – the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was the ruling party’s standard bearer in the election, objected to the petitioners’ move to call witnesses whose statements were served late.
Proceedings in the petition resumed smoothly on yesterday before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) before it was brought to an abrupt end over an hour later, owing to the respondents’ objection.
Earlier in the day’s proceedings, petitioners’ lawyer, Chris Uche, (SAN), tendered bundles of copies of Forms EC8B from 10 Local Government Areas in Kogi States, which were admitted by the court after the respondents registered their objection and promised to provide reasons later.
Uche told the court that his clients were still expecting the INEC to release more documents to them.
He said their constraint was that they got information the previous day that some of the documents were ready and outside Abuja, and wondered why they were required to go outside Abuja to access the documents after paying N6.69million to the electoral agency.
Uche then proceeded to call a witness, Ndubuisi Nwobu, who described himself as the Chairman of the PDP in Anambra State.
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Nwobi, who said he acted as the PDP state Collation Agent in Anambra during the election, claimed that the process was manipulated at the Ward Collation Centres.
The witness, who was the petitioners’ 11th so far, said although Peter Obi ‘s Labour Party (LP) won the state, he believed the process was not free and fair all over the state.
When asked if he was present at all the 4720 polling units in the state during the election to have witnessed when the process was allegedly manipulated, Nwobi said he only visited about 30 polling units.
He said he got information about the alleged manipulation from his party’s agents at all the polling units where he could not visit.
Nwobi, who said the election held peacefully and in accordance with the law at the polling unit level, said his main grouse was that the when process was that INEC officials did not “upload election results to the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) on time as promised by its Chairman before the election.
He claimed that the manipulation of the process took place dying collation, stating that he even had to intervene in some occasions to rescue INEC’s collation officers from being attacked by party agents and irate voters.
Lawyers to the respondents – Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) for INEC, Akin Olujinmi (SAN) for President Tinubu, and Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) for the APC – however kicked when Uche moved to call some subpoenaed witnesses.
They complained that the witnesses’ written statements, filed by the petitioners, were served on them few minutes before the commencement of the court’s proceedings.
The respondents’ lawyers sought time to familiarise themselves with the statements and seek clarifications from their clients, a position that moved the court to postpone further hearing till the next day.
Similar incident occurred on Tuesday when proceedings were brought to an abrupt end owing to some defects identified in the schedule of documents filed by the petitioners.
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Also yesterday, Obi and the LP continued the prosecution of their petition by tendering more result sheets, including Certified True Copies (CTCs) of Forms EC8B (ward collated results), EC8C (Local Government collated results), EC8D (state collated results) and EC8DA (national collated results).
Obi and the LP tendered their documents through a member of their legal team, Paul Ananaba (SAN), who did the tendering from the bar.
Ananaba tendered Forms EC8B for 12 Local Government Areas in Ebonyi State, four Local Government Areas in Kaduna State, four Local Government Areas in Oyo State and one council in Nasarawa State.
The lawyer explained that they were the remnants of what were tendered the previous day.
Ananaba proceeded to tender copies of Forms EC8C from 13 states, including eight Local Government Areas in Bayelsa, 23 Local Government Areas in Benue, 18 Local Government Areas in Cross River, 10 Local Government Areas in Ebonyi, 18 Local Government Areas in Edo, 20 Local Government Areas in Lagos, 25 Local Government Areas in Niger, 18 Local Government Areas in Ondo, 33 Local Government Areas in Oyo, 23 Local Government Areas in Rivers, 23 Local Government Areas in Sokoto, 16 Local Government Areas in Ekiti and 25 Local Government Areas in Delta.
He equally tendered 51 pages of Forms EC8D for the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and a copy of Form EC8DA.
Despite respondents’ objection to the admissibility of the other documents, their lawyers, however, did not resist the admission of the national result in evidence.
Hearing in the petition resumes today at 2pm.