Atiku and Obi close PEPC case amid complaint of frustration by INEC
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Bola Tinubu will on June 30 begin defence of his presidential mandate, seven days after Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi are expected to end presentation of their consolidated petitions on June 23, the court has ruled.
The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja announced on Tuesday that all the three petitioners before it would close their cases on Friday.
The three petitioners challenging the declaration of Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election held on February 25 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) are:
- Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar
- Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi
- Allied Peoples Movement (APM)
Atiku and Obi each claims he won the ballot but the APM seeks to void all the votes scored by Tinubu “in view of his non-qualification.”
The APM argued the withdrawal of Ibrahim Masari, who was initially nominated as the vice presidential candidate of the APC, invalidated Tinubu’s candidacy in view of Section 131(c) and 142 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
All the petitioners are seeking the withdrawal of the Certificate of Return (CoR) the INEC issued to Tinubu.
151 witnesses
Atiku, through his team of lawyers led by Chris Uche, SAN, told the court he would invite 100 witnesses to prove his case, Obi said he would call 50 witnesses. The APM clarified its case is based on documentary evidence and would call only one witness.
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Consolidating petitions
The five-member PEPC, chaired by Justice Haruna Tsammani, on May 23 consolidated all the petitions and gave the litigants three weeks to present their cases.
Based on a pre-hearing order issued by the panel, the petitioners were supposed to close their case on Tuesday, but the court extended the deadline by two days for them to fully wrap up their arguments, per reporting by Vanguard.
Atiku has called 25 witnesses, Obi has called seven and tendered several documentary exhibits.
Uche told the court on Tuesday Atiku may call five more witnesses to round them up at 30, explaining additional documents they seek to tender would take care of the evidence of the remaining 70 witnesses.
Hurdles in getting documents from INEC
Uche lamented that in spite of the cooperation the court had appealed for, the INEC makes it difficult for his client to get Certified True Copies (CTCs) of documents requested.
Getting documents from the INEC is like demanding for weapons from an opponent in a war, he said, adding his client requested Form EC8A series – polling unit results for all the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) – but had got only 14 batches so far.
Uche also complained the forms the INEC made available to his team were not properly sorted out.
The court initially stood down the matter for 10 minutes to allow for the sorting out of the documents, but when the proceedings resumed, Uche persuaded the court to adjourn the case to Wednesday to enable his team prepare a schedule for ease of identification of the documents to be tendered in evidence.
Lawrence Bayode, INEC Deputy Director of ICT Department, who was subpoenad by the PEPC, disclosed he brought two out of five documents the petitioners requested.
The panel adjourned the hearing until Wednesday.