The court adjourned the hearing until Tuesday (today) for the petitioners to continue tendering documents, including forms EC8B and EC8C.
Hearing of the petition of Peter Obi and the Labour Party continued on Monday at the Presidential Election Petition Court, with the tendering of more documents in evidence amid “obvious tardiness” by the opposition’s legal team.
Patrick Ikwueto, who conducted the proceedings for the petitioners, tendered EC8A FORM from eight states. The documents are certified true copies obtained from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for 13 local government areas of Ebonyi.
He also tendered EC8A for 13 local government areas in Nasarawa, 25 from Delta, 33 from Kaduna, 21 from local government areas of Kogi, 27 from local government areas of Imo, 18 from Ondo and seven from Sokoto.
All the respondents objected to the admissibility of all the documents sought to be tendered, saying they would give their reasons during the final address.
Mr Ikwueto prayed the court to take an application to serve interrogatories on INEC. He said the interrogatories contained 12 questions in which they sought answers from the commission.
An interrogatory is a written question formally put to one party in a case by another party and which must be answered.
At Monday’s resumed hearing of the petition, Mr Ikwueto told the court that the petitioners had a predicament they needed to bring before the judges.
“On May 23, my lords issued a pre-hearing report directing proceedings of the court. Prior to this, on May 22, we filed an application vide which we are seeking my lord’s leave to serve interrogatories on the first respondent, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),” stated the lawyer.
He added, “There are about 12 questions which we put down in that paper. We filed an application to be allowed to hear that motion outside the pre-hearing session.”
Responding, INEC’s lawyer Abubakar Mahmoud said he was just served the motion and was still within time to respond. He explained that the motion was not ripe for hearing and would oppose the application, adding that the application was just a waste of the court’s time.
President Bola Tinubu’s and Vice-President Kashim Shettima’s lawyer Wole Olanipekun and the All Progressives Congress’ lawyer Lateef Fagbemi said they would oppose the application.
The petitioners, however, maintained that the application did not concern the other respondents, only INEC, adding that the issues they sought to get answers to were pertinent to their petition.
Mr Fagbemi also complained that the petitioners were disregarding the directive from the pre-hearing report and not serving counsel with their schedule of documents on time.
The tribunal chairman, Justice Haruna Tsammani, urged the petitioners to be “gentlemen” and not breach the terms of the pre-hearing report.
Mr Ikwueto apologised to the court for what he described as an “obvious tardiness” and made a commitment that his team would follow the pre-hearing directive henceforth.
The court adjourned the hearing until Tuesday for the petitioners to continue tendering documents, including forms EC8B and EC8C.
(NAN)
