The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has struck out about 17 paragraphs from the petition brought before it by Peter Obi and the Labour Party.
The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has struck out about 17 paragraphs from the petition brought before it by Peter Obi and the Labour Party.
A member of the tribunal’s five-member panel, Justice Abba Mohammed, read the lead judgment.
Obi and LP are complainants in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, challenging the election which brought Bola Tinubu to power on May 29.
The petitioners made allegations of irregularities and said they would rely on spreadsheets, inspection reports and forensic analysis filed with the petition during the trial.
But in his lead judgement, Mohammed held that the petitioners failed to show which polling units the malpractices alleged occurred, the number of votes affected, and their polling unit agents who reported the alleged irregularities, and malpractices, among others.
“The determination of election is about figures,” the court held.
The court said the petitioners also failed to prove that their votes were suppressed by failing to specify the number of votes suppressed.
The court also struck out several paragraphs of the LP’s petition for being generic and vague, stating that the affected paragraphs failed to name the specific polling units where irregularities occurred.
The court held that witnesses 3,4,5,6, 7,8,9,10,11 and 13 subpoenaed by LP are not witnesses of the court and that the witness statements were filed out of time.
“Out of a total of 13 witnesses called by Obi/LP, 10 of those witnesses are not countenanced by the court,” Justice Haruna Tsammani said.
Tsammani said the 10 witness statements of oath are incompetent and cannot be admissible by the court.
