The Presidential Election Petitions Court has admitted the documents of the Labour Party (LP) from six states over the February 25 presidential election.
This is as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) produced three witnesses on the third day of main trial on the petitions challenging the February 25 presidential election.
The five-member panel presided by Justice Haruna Tsammani on Thursday admitted the LP documents from Rivers, Benue, Cross River, Niger, Osun and Ekiti states.
The documents tendered were result sheets of the polling units, wards and local governments in the listed six states.
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The admitted exhibits are forms BC8 series: EC8A, EC8B, EC8C, EC: and EC8E used in the election as the party said it will present exhibits from 18 states.
However, lawyers to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima all objected to the admissibility of the documents and informed the court that they will make their objections known during the final address against the petition.
The panel adjourned hearing to Friday for continuation.
Earlier, the panel of justices criticised the lawyers of the LP and Peter Obi over their non-organisation of documents sought to be tendered as exhibits.
The justices took turns to criticise the failure of the lawyers to organise the forms EC8A series (result sheets) sought to be tendered before the court.
Counsel to LP, Emeka Okpoko (SAN) had announced the documents for Benue and Rivers states, but failed to present the total number of documents from the 23 and 21 local government areas.
The court later stood down the matter to enable the LP lawyers to organise their materials.
We were forced to sign manipulated result sheets – Atiku’s witnesses
Three witnesses of the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, also testified before the court on Thursday that INEC’s declared results were full of manipulations and irregularities.
The witnesses are PDP state collation officers: Captain Joe Agada (Kogi); Dr Solarin Sunday Adekunle (Ogun); and Hon. Nkem Abonta (Abia).
Testifying, Agada told the court that agents of the PDP in the over 3,500 polling units in the state, including himself, were forced to sign manipulated result sheets.
Under cross examination by counsel to Tinubu, Akin Olujimi (SAN), he recanted his earlier position that the agents were not reporting the situation in their respective polling units.
In his testimony, Adekunle claimed the results INEC credited to the APC were inflated, adding that he observed that in his polling units and others in the 5,040 polling units of the state.
Counsel to INEC, Kemi Pinheiro (SAN), and APC counsel, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), both drew his attention to paragraphs in his statement on oath which were allegedly lifted word-for-word from the first witness, Agada.
He said he only deposed the statement and was not aware of similarities with a previous witness statement.
In his testimony, Abonta informed the court that the votes announced by INEC for Abia were false, adding that, “There were discrepancies in what we have and what INEC declared.”
Hearing is expected to continue today.
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