Obi’s case against Tinubu suffers another setback as PEPC rejects 10 witnesses, retains only 3

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has rejected 10 of the witnesses brought by Peter Obi against the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the 2023 presidential election.

Chairman of the Court, Justice Haruna Tsammani said witnesses 3,4,5,6, 7,8,9,10,11 and 13 brought by the petitioners were filed out of time and with personal interest.

The Justices had earlier ruled that Peter Obi and the Labour Party failed to list specific polling units where they alleged rigging and therefore, knocked out Obi’s allegation of massive vote rigging.

The striking out of the evidence of 10 out of the 13 witnesses called by Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) in support of their petition against the election of President Bola Tinubu, appears to be a major blow against Obi’s petition.

In the judgment, the court noted that the witnesses, who were subpoenaed at the instance of the petitioners, had their written statements, which contained their evidence, were not filed along or frontloaded with the petition within the 21 days allowed by the Electoral Act 2022.

The court, in the lead judgment currently being read by Justice Haruna Tsammani, also rejected the documents, including the report of analysis, tendered by the petitioners through the affected 10 witnesses.

The court also held that some of the witnesses are not only persons with interest in the outcome of the case, the reports they tendered were made during the pendency of the case.

This is also coming after the PEPC threw out the double nomination petition of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) against the All Progressives Congress (APC) Vice Presidential candidate and current Vice President, Kashim Shettima, for being incompetent.