On Monday, the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, continued to hear the petition filed by Peter Obi and the Labour Party, during which time the petitioners presented additional documents in support of their claims.
The petitioners’ representative, Mr. Patrick Ikwueto, SAN, submitted EC8A forms from eight different states.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, provided the documents for 13 local government areas in Ebonyi. They are certified true copies.
Additionally, he submitted bids in form EC8A for 21 local government areas in Kogi, 33 in Kaduna State, 25 in Delta, and 13 in Nasarawa.
There are also form EC8As for 18 in Ondo, 7 in Sokoto State, and 27 in Imo’s local government areas.
Each respondent raised an objection to the admissibility of each document that was requested to be tendered and stated that they would explain their positions during the closing address.
In an earlier request, Ikwueto asked the court to consider a request to serve INEC with interrogatories.
According to Ikwueto, there were 12 questions in the interrogatories to which the commission was asked for a response.
In a legal proceeding, an interrogatory is a formal written question that must be responded to by one of the parties.
Ikwueto informed the court at the petition hearing’s resumed hearing on Monday that the petitioners needed to present their situation to the judges because it was dire.
The pre-hearing report that directed the court’s proceedings was issued by my lords on May 23.
Prior to this, on May 22, we submitted a request through which we are requesting my lord’s permission to serve interrogatories on the first respondent, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
“We wrote 12 or so questions down on that piece of paper. For the purpose of hearing that motion outside of the pre-hearing session, we submitted an application,” he said.
The INEC’s legal representative, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud SAN, responded by stating that he had just served the motion and that he still had time to respond.
He declared that the motion was not ready for hearing and that he would oppose it, adding that it was a waste of both the court’s and the attorneys’ time.
Attorneys for President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, Mr. Wole Olanipekun SAN, and the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, also declared that they would oppose the application.
But the petitioners insisted that only INEC was a party to the application and that no other respondents were involved. They also insisted that their petition was relevant to the questions they were asking about.
Fagbemi also expressed his displeasure that the petitioners were not promptly serving counsel with their schedule of documents and were disobeying the pre-hearing report’s instruction.
The court’s chief justice, Justice Haruna Tsammani, pleaded with the petitioners to act like “gentlemen” and abide by the pre-hearing report’s rules.
Ikwueto expressed regret to the judge for his team’s “obvious tardiness” and promised that they would now adhere to the pre-hearing directive.
To allow the petitioners to continue submitting documents, such as forms EC8B and EC8C, the court postponed the hearing until Tuesday.
