Mr Peter Obi and his Labour Party (LP) On Wednesday tendered additional blurred INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) documents before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
Obi and his Labour Party (LP) are petitioners in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023 challenging the election which brought President Bola Tinubu into power.
Respondents in the suit are the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Bola Tinubu, Vice-President Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
At the resumed hearing of the PEPC, the petitioners tendered, IREV reports downloaded and certified by INEC in 21 Local Government Areas in Benue, 25 Local Government Areas in Niger and 17 Local Government Areas in Edo.
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Obi also tendered the IREV reports from 20 LGA of Bauchi and a bundle of the blurred reports; eight LGA of Bayelsa IreV reports were also tendered.
IreV reports from Bayelsa marked blurred, no results or cancelled were tendered, Gombe eight LGA and a bundle of blurred reports not linked to any LGA were tendered.
IreV report for Kaduna, 21 LGA and two bundles of blurred reports not linked to any government area were tendered also.
Tendered further are IreV certificates of compliance of six states excluding Akwa Ibom, and 28 states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
All the documents tendered were objected to by all the respondents but admitted and marked as exhibits by the court. The respondents, however, reserved the responses to their objections to their final written addresses.
At the end of tendering, Levi Uzoukwu, SAN counsel for the petitioners drew the court’s attention to unfruitful attempts to serve INEC chairman with a subpoena. The subpoena according to Uzoukwu was for him to produce certain documents.
He added that he spoke to the lead counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud who promised to help out. He, therefore, asked for an adjournment until tomorrow.
Responding, Kemi Pinhero, SAN who represented INEC told the court that the petitioners ‘counsel should stop using INEC as ‘ a weeping boy.’
“It is not correct that the office of the INEC chairman refused to be served, but PDP served several documents and received replies.”
He added that it has become the habit of the petitioners each time they want an adjournment to find blame on INEC.
Other respondents’ counsel, however, did not object to the prayer for adjournment. Meanwhile, the five-man panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani adjourned until tomorrow for further hearing of the petition. (NAN)
