PEPC: Court Admits Results Of 18,000 PUs In Peter Obi’s Petition

The Presidential Election Petition Court on Thursday, admitted in evidence data analysis of the February 25 presidential election results and their accompanying appendices.

The Court also admitted in evidence, blurred results from 18,088 polling units from the results viewing portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission. The evidence was tendered by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in the February 25 presidential election. The LP and Obi are challenging the outcome of the election where the current President, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was declared winner by INEC.

During the resumed hearing on Thursday, counsel for the petitioners, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN) conducted the proceedings on behalf of the LP and Obi. The Senior Advocate at the start of the sitting informed the court that he intended to call to the witness box a professor of Mathematics, Eric Ofoedu, to testify before the court.

The witness was said to have been engaged a few days before the election by the 2nd petitioner, LP to carry out an analysis of the data from the February 25 election. Admitted also in evidence were the letter addressed to Ofoedu seeking his service and the subpoena served on him to appear before the court.

The respondents in the suit namely; the Independent National Electoral Commission, Tinubu, his vice-president, Kashim Shettima, and the APC all objected to the admissibility of the documents.

Specifically, counsel for the APC, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), objected to the admissibility of the subpoena served on the witness but gave his consent to the court to admit the letter of engagement. They all said that the reasons for their objections will be advanced at the later stage of the petition.

The witness was not cross-examined by the respondents as the five-man panel of the court headed by Justice Tsammani in a brief ruling, moved the cross-examination to Friday, June 16, following the objections by the respondents that they were just served the witness statement a few minutes before the sitting.