Atiku, Obi close cases | Only 40 of 150 witnesses called — highlights of Friday’s tribunal session

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar as well as Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), have closed their respective cases before the presidential election petition court.

Here are the major highlights of Friday’s proceedings.

PDP, ATIKU CLOSE CASE

The PDP and Atiku closed their case on Friday after calling 27 witnesses and tendering several documents in evidence.

Although the petitioners had said they would call about 100 witnesses to support their petition, they ended their case after the 27th witness was called.

The last witness tendered several documents — including a BSc certificate from Chicago State University, a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate and Mobil Nigeria Oil Plc certificate of service — which bore the name “Bola Adekunle Tinubu”.

Tinubu’s forms EC13 and EC9 submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to enable him to contest the election were also tendered. 

 LP WITNESS ASKS COURT TO CANCEL ELECTION

Tanko Yunusa, the 12th witness of the LP and Peter Obi, told the court that he prefers that an order is made cancelling the presidential election.

Yunusa, who served as the spokesperson of the LP presidential campaign, said out of 176,974 polling units in the country, his party deployed 133,000 agents to monitor the elections.

Under cross-examination by Wole Olanipekun, President Bola Tinubu’s counsel, Yunusa insisted that votes were allocated to all the presidential candidates by INEC.

“If the results were uploaded as required by the law, my party would have gotten more votes than what was allocated to us,” he said.

He told the court that the election should be voided, including the votes “allocated” to Obi.

“We are not satisfied with the outcome of the election. That is why we are here in court. How do we know the actual votes we got when the results are yet to be uploaded on the IReV portal, four months after the election was held,” the witness said.

“We are challenging the entire results of the election and if they are cancelled, it affects results that were allocated to all the candidates, including votes scored by Atiku.”

OBI, LP CLOSE CASE

Like the PDP, Obi and his party have also concluded their case.

During pre-hearing, the petitioners had said they would call 50 witnesses to support their case.

However, only 13 witnesses were called in total while several documents were tendered and admitted in evidence by the court.

INEC TO OPEN CASE JULY 3

Following the conclusion of the petitioners’ case, the respondents are expected to commence their defence.

The tribunal fixed July 3 for INEC to open its case.