Labour Party (LP) and its Presidential Candidate, Peter Obi have tendered more documents in evidence against President Bola Tinubu’s victory.
Gatekeepers News reports that LP and Obi tendered the documents at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) on Monday.
Patrick Ikwueto, SAN, who conducted the proceedings for the petitioners tendered Form EC8A from eight states.
The documents are certified true copies obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) for 13 local government areas of Ebonyi.
Ikwueto also tendered form EC8A for 13 local government areas of Nasarawa, 25 of Delta, 33 of Kaduna state, and 21 local government areas of Kogi.
Others are form EC8As for 27 local government areas of Imo, 18 for Ondo, and 7 for Sokoto state.
All the respondents objected to the admissibility of all the documents sought to be tendered and said they would give their reasons during the final address.
Earlier, Ikwueto prayed the court to take an application that sought to serve interrogatories on INEC.
He stated that the interrogatories contained 12 questions in which they sought answers from the commission.
An interrogatory is a written question that is formally put to one party in a case by another party and which must be answered.
At the resumed hearing of the petition on Monday, Ikwueto said, “On May 23, My Lords issued a pre-hearing report directing proceedings of the court.
“Prior to this on May 22, we filed an application vide which we are seeking my lord’s leave to serve interrogatories on the 1st respondent, the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC). There are about 12 questions which we put down in that paper. We filed an application to be allowed to hear that motion outside the pre-hearing session.”
In reaction to this, the counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, said that he was just served the motion and was still within time to respond.
Mahmoud who said that the motion was not ripe for hearing, noted that he would oppose the application. He added that the application was just a waste of the court’s time as well as that of counsel.
Similarly, counsel to President Bola Tinubu and Vice-President Kashim Shettima, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, and counsel of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Lateef Fagbemi, SAN also said that they would oppose the application.
Fagbemi complained that the petitioners were disregarding the directive from the pre-hearing report and not serving counsel with their schedule of documents on time.
The Chairman of the Court, Justice Haruna Tsammani further implored the petitioners to be “gentlemen” and not breach the terms of the pre-hearing report.
Ikwueto apologised to the court for what he described as an “obvious tardiness” and made a commitment that his team would follow the pre-hearing directive henceforth.
