Presidential Election Petition Court: Obi, Atiku To Close Case Against Tinubu On Thursday

The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, will on Thursday, close their cases challenging the declaration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.

Also the Allied People’s Movement (APM), is expected to call its sole witness and close its case this Wednesday.

The three petitioners in their separate petitions were seeking the nullification of the election of President Tinubu over alleged irregularities, corrupt practices, non-compliance with the electoral laws amongst others, in the February 25 election.

The APM whose petition would be heard today is claiming that Tinubu ought not to be on the ballot over alleged double nomination of his then running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima and one Kabir Masari, who was initially nominated as a “place holder” Vice President nominee.

Following the consolidations of the three petitions at the close of the pre-hearing session on May 23, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC), allotted three weeks each to Atiku and Obi to prove their individual petitions.

The three weeks period, which started on May 30 is expected to end on June 20, but following a lost of two days in the hearing of the petitioners case, the five member panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani agreed to an extension of the two days, to make up for time lost.

Consequently, Atiku and Obi would now close their case tomorrow, Thursday June 22. At the proceedings on Tuesday, Atiku’s lawyer, Chief Chris Uche (SAN) drew the court’s attention to the fact that they had lost two days out of the days allotted to them and asked that the two days be returned to them.

Both have tendered plethora of documents, which they believed would sway the panel to give them a favourable judgment.

Majority of the documents tendered included Certified True Copies (CTCs) of election results from polling units to wards, local governments, states and final results declared by INEC’s Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood.

The Labour Party through one of its witnesses tendered over 18,000 blurred exhibits of purported election results from several Local Government Areas ( LGAs) across the country.

The witnesses, which included subpoenaed adhoc staffs of INEC, all gave evidence to support claims of the petitioners that the results of the presidential election, unlike the Senate and House of Representatives results conducted simultaneously was not transmitted real time from the polling units ,using the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) to INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) portals.

At Tuesday’s proceedings, the petitioners still made frantic efforts to tender additional exhibits especially those from the electoral umpire.

Both Atiku and Obi had prayed the court to issue subpoenaed order on Mahmood to bring in some documents which they claimed was vital to their individual petitions.

They also accused INEC of lack of cooperation in respect of release of electoral documents needed to prove that the February 25 presidential election was not conducted in line with INEC’s regulations and guidelines for the election.

According to the court, there seemed to be no evidence that the Labour Party issued subpoenas on the Resident Electoral Commissioners [REC] in the states where it was seeking documents.