Admin l Friday, June 2, 2023
ABUJA, Nigeria – The Presidential Election Tribunal, PET, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja has vacated scheduled sitting for tomorrow Saturday, at the instance of counsels to the All Progressive Congress, APC and that of Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
They told the court that they will be traveling out of town, forcing the LP team to agree with them. The court will now sit on Monday June 5 at 2 pm, following adjournment by Justice Tsammani.
Both APC and INEC prayed the court to vacate sitting scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday even as the Labour Party today tendered overwhelming evidence of fraud in some of the 18 states which the party is interested and believes LP won in the February 25 presidential election.
Today the LP frontloaded evidence originals of INEC Form EC8 from Lagos, Edo, Akwa Ibom State, Lagos, Rivers State and Edo State before the court and were all admitted as evidence by the PET.
Meanwhile, both INEC and the APC have objected without any reason but said they will provide explanations in their final written addresses and prove that the petitioners have laboured in vain.
LP: May I apply pursuant to paragraph 40(6) sub paragraph 4 of the 1st Schedule to the electoral act for all the certified true copies of INEC documents which we have so far tendered in this petition to be taken as read. INEC: In view of the objections raised by us, on behalf of the 1st respondent we do not give our consent. 2nd & 3rd:
My Lords we maintain the same stand with the 1st respondent and don’t give our consent. 4th: Given our object to the admissibility of all the documents sought to be tendered by the petitioners in evidence, we invariably oppose to this application.
LP: I am shocked and surprised that they are opposing to this. Court: (Jokes) just come prepared for any surprise so you’ll not developers BP.
LP: We have exhausted the documents we have for today but we will be ready on the next date with more documents including documents from Subpoenaed witness from INEC.
However my Lord, all respondents have agreed that it should be adjourned till Monday as opposed to tomorrow. If it is not PREJUDICED, and our time will not be counted.
Court: No adjournment till Monday. Come tomorrow. LP: Okay my Lord we will come tomorrow my Lords!
2nd & 3rd: We are pleading that some of us need to travel out of here as we are not from here so we are all parties in this petition pleading with your Lordships to come back on Monday and not tomorrow. INEC:
We are concerned that your Lordships have been sitting for 9 hours and we too. So we solicit your Lordship’s permission. 4th: I also yield and seek for Monday since the Petitioners raised the application.
Petitioners: We are ready to come tomorrow if it will affect our time. Court: Well since the Counsels have discussed and agreed, we will grant the adjournment only for this Saturday and not further. It will not affect the petitioners time.
Recall that on Thursday, the tribunal received evidence of electoral materials from 6 states by the Labour Party and Mr. Peter Obi.
Counsel to the Petitioners had told the Court that they are only interested in the election results from 18 states in the country.
Amongst the 6 states electoral results tendered to the panel as evidence for the day were River State with 15 Local government, Benue 23, Niger State 23, Osun 20, Cross River 18 and Ekiti 16.
Responding to all the evidence tendered. Counsels to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Respondents objected to the admissibility of the documents stating that they would be responding to the objections in their written addresses in due time.
The court
Report courtesy Miss Pearls
