Politics
Peter Obi’s request for phony evidence against the president led to Tinubu’s victory, according to INEC
Some of the documents that Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate for the 2023 election, asked to produce as exhibits in the Presidential Election Tribunal are nonexistent.
The announcement was made by INEC on Tuesday in Abuja during the Tribunal’s session.
In a lawsuit with the case number CA/PEPC/03/2023, Obi and the Labour Party (LP) contest President Bola Tinubu’s election on February 25.
INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, and their All Progressives Congress (APC) are included as respondents in the petition.
Two of the five documents Obi requested did not exist, while one was a work-in-progress, according to Mr. Lawrence Bayode, Deputy Director, ICT at INEC, who testified in court.
One of Obi’s witnesses, Ms. Loretta Ogah, an ICT cloud engineer, claimed she ran for office in Cross River as a candidate for the Labour Party but was unsuccessful.
Mr. Wole Olanipakun (SAN), the attorney for Tinubu and Shettima, cross-examined Ogah.
The electoral umpire failed to put her name on its portal due to a network outage, she said in court, so she sued INEC after losing.
Ogah said during cross-examination by Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), counsel for the APC, that bugs on the INEC website did not exist on February 25.
She said that because she was not an INEC employee, she was unaware of the password policy.
According to NAN, the court, ruled over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, postponed further proceedings till Wednesday.