Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has, for the third time, stepped down hearing of the petition filed by Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) against the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
GatekeepersNews reports that the petition was stepped down by the court following a poor schedule of documents being sought to be tendered to establish the allegations of malpractices during the February 25 presidential election.
At Thursday’s proceedings, the court discovered that the documents were not properly scheduled as ordered by the Court.
In the drama that ensued at the point of rendering the documents from the 23 local government areas of Benue, a lot of discrepancies were uncovered.
All efforts to reconcile the anomaly and reschedule the documents were unsuccessful as the errors were beyond immediate solution.
Counsel to Obi and the Labour Party, Chief Emeka Okpoko SAN, in an attempt to save the situation, sought to use documents not filed to conduct the proceedings, but the move was rejected on the ground of illegality.
The court stepped down from the hearing of the petition and ordered the legal team to go and re-file the schedule of documents in line with the provisions of the pre-hearing report.
At the time of this report, Peter Obi and the Vice Presidential candidate, Datti Baba Ahmed, were in the court as their lawyers were running helter and skelter to the Registry of the Court to file a new schedule of documents.
Meanwhile, the five Justices led by Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani hearing the petition have retired to their chambers to await when the legal team will put its house in order.
