The Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja made a significant development on Tuesday by accepting forms for the collation of presidential election results in 17 states as exhibits in a petition filed against President Bola Tinubu. The petition was brought forward by Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) during the February 25 election, and his party. The exhibits, known as Forms EC8B, were presented by Obi and the LP during the hearing of the petition.
The petition, marked as CA/PEPC/03/2023, named President Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), his deputy Alhaji Kashim Shettima, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as respondents. In the courtroom, Mr. Ben Anichebe, SAN, a member of Obi's legal team, tendered the Forms EC8B from the 17 states under contention.
The states for which the forms were presented include Adamawa, Bayelsa, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Niger, Ondo, Sokoto, Delta, Ekiti, Imo, Kaduna, Oyo, Cross River, Edo, Akwa Ibom, and Lagos. These states collectively accounted for a significant portion of the overall election results.
Representatives of the respondents, namely Mr. Kemi Pinhero (SAN) for INEC, Mr. Wole Olanipekun (SAN) for Tinubu and Shettima, and Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) for the APC, objected to the tendering of the Forms EC8Bs by the petitioners. However, they reserved their reasons for objection until their final addresses.
Despite the objections, the court admitted all the documents submitted by the petitioners as their schedule of documents and marked them as exhibits. This decision affirmed the relevance and admissibility of the Forms EC8B in the ongoing proceedings.
The five-man panel overseeing the case, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, adjourned the further hearing of the petition until the following day, allowing both parties to prepare for their final arguments and submissions. The admission of the forms as exhibits represents a crucial step in the petition process, providing important evidence for the court to consider in evaluating the validity of the election and the claims made by the petitioners.
