Tribunal: Obi closes case against Tinubu with 13 witnesses

Candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi, who alleged that the presidential election that held on February 25 was rigged in favour of President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, on Friday, closed his case.

Obi, who came third in the presidential contest, closed his case after he tendered several documentary evidence and called a total of 13 witnesses that testified before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja.

Among exhibits he tendered before the court included polling unit results from 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, as well as bundle of documents containing the total number of Permanent Voters Card, PVCs, that were collected in 32 states prior to the 2023 general elections.

Aside from tendering four video exhibits, one of which was a press conference, where the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, assured that results of the election would be electronically transmitted to the IReV portal in real-time using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines, Obi and his party, equally tendered bundle of documents that contained the total number of registered voters in each of the states.

Other electoral documents the court admitted in evidence were certified true copies of INEC Forms EC40Gs; EC40G1; EC40GPU, which were reports of various polling units where elections did not hold.

All the Respondents had challenged the admissibility of all the documents in evidence, saying they would adduce reasons behind their objections in their final written address.

Meanwhile, though the Petitioners initially told the court that they would call a total of 50 witnesses to testify in the matter, however, they closed their case on Friday with the testimony of the 13th witness.

Earlier in the proceeding, Tanko Yunusa, who testified as the 12th witness, told the court that he served as the Chief Spokesman of the Labour Party Presidential Election Council as well as the National Director of Media in the party.

While being cross-examined by counsel to the INEC, Kemi Pinhero, SAN, the witness, told the court that during the presidential poll, he voted at Dawaki district of Abuja and afterwards went to LP’s Election Situation Room at Asokoro.

He told the court that he subsequently returned back to his polling unit to observe the counting of votes.

Yunusa told the court that his party filed several suits before the general elections, even as he identified a copy of the judgement of the Federal High Court in Abuja marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/1454/2022, which was delivered on January 23, 2023.

The certified true copy of the said judgement which was a case the LP filed against INEC before the general elections, was admitted in evidence as Exhibit S1.

In page two of the judgement which the witness was asked to read, in the open court, the LP had as party of its reliefs, sought to compel INEC to electronically transmit results of the general elections.

However, in the concluding part of the judgement, all the reliefs that were sought by the party were refused as the high court held that nothing in the Electoral Act stipulated how INEC should transmit election results.

The high court, while dismissing the suit, further held that INEC was at liberty to prescribe the manner the election results should be transmitted.

Meanwhile, when the witness was shown copies of some results of the presidential election and asked to read out the scores that were recorded for both the LP and APC, he said the documents were blurred and badly mutilated.

He equally told the court that from the 105 paragraphed affidavit he deposed in his statement on oath in support of the petition, he did not state any figure to indicate the number of unlawful votes that were credited to PresidentTinubu and the APC.

Yunusa further told the court that though there are 176, 974 polling units in the country, his party, deployed a total of 133, 000 agents to monitor the elections.