Political News in Nigeria Today
Tribunal admits evidence from Peter Obi, LP in case against President Tinubu
Bundles of election-related documents from six federation-wide elections on February 25 were allowed into evidence on Thursday by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The Labour Party and Peter Obi, who ran for president in the most recent election, submitted the documents in support of their lawsuit contesting the results of the election in which Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress was declared the victor by the Independent National Electoral Commission. The documents consisted of forms EC8A, which are polling unit results.
The petitioners informed the court during Thursday’s proceedings that they will provide the Certified True Copies of the papers as evidence in regard to 18 states of the federation through the legal team led by Awa Kalu SAN.
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However, before their given time ran out, they could only produce documents from 6 states.
The local government areas of Rivers, Benue, Cross River, Niger, Osun, and Ekiti submitted their results sheets on Thursday before the allotted time had run out.
They presented the court with EC8A forms from 15 Local Government Areas of Rivers states in addition to other forms.
The petitioners who initially told the tribunal of their intention to present the bundle of forms for 21 LGAs of Rivers state seemed unable to reconcile the list in their presentation and subsequently tendered 15.
However, the respondents in the petition objected to the admissibility of the Certified True Copies of the documents which were presented before the court.
They said they would advance reasons behind their objections in their final written addresses.
The President, Bola Tinubu, through his team of lawyers led by Wole Olanikpekun SAN, objected to the tendering of documents even as the INEC said it was opposed to the admissibility of the documents.
In a similar vein, the APC opposed the documents in evidence.
Furthermore, INEC’s team of lawyers led by Kemi Pinheiro, SAN opposed the admissibility of the documents.
