In a significant development, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has accepted the collated final presidential election results as evidence in Peter Obi’s petition seeking the nullification of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the February 25, 2023 election.
Presented by Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), the final result was admitted without objection from the four respondents: the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shetima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC). Additionally, the respondents did not contest the reading of the vital documents in the open court.
Under the guidance of their lawyer, Professor Paul Ananaba (SAN), Obi and the Labour Party tendered the collated election results, along with several exhibits, to support their petition against Tinubu’s election. While the respondents opposed the admissibility of the collated results at the ward, local government, and state levels, they accepted the final result without objections.
The collated results from all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as recorded in forms EC8D used by INEC, were tendered and admitted as exhibits. Obi, who was personally present in court, focused his argument on the collated results at the local government and state levels before presenting the final result as evidence to support his petition.
The collated results from the ward level were admitted as exhibits for 13 states, including Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, Ondo, Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Ekiti, and Delta. Furthermore, Obi presented collated results from 8 local government areas in Bayelsa, 23 in Benue, 18 in Cross River, 10 in Ebonyi, 18 in Edo, 20 in Lagos, 25 in Niger State, and additional results from other states.
While INEC, Tinubu, Shetima, and the APC initially objected to the admission of the collated results, the presiding Justice of the court, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, ruled in favor of Obi and the Labour Party, admitting the results as exhibits.
The hearing in the petition will continue on June 8, 2023, as scheduled by Justice Tsammani. This development signifies a crucial stage in the legal process surrounding the election and highlights the importance of the presented evidence in determining the outcome of Obi’s petition.
