Obi Closes Case against Tinubu’s Election after Calling 13 Witnesses 

•Insists election was rigged 

Alex Enumah in  Abuja

The candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi, yesterday, closed his case against the election of President Bola Tinubu, after calling 13 witnesses.

Besides the witnesses including those summoned by the court, Obi and his party the LP in their joint petition also tendered a plethora of evidence including electronic documents to prove their allegations against the conduct of the February 25 presidential election that produced Tinubu as President.

Obi, who came third in the presidential election, is claiming that he and not Tinubu won the presidential poll, adding that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allegedly credited unlawful votes to Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) so as to declare them winner of the presidential election.

Amongst the documents tendered are polling units results, ward results, local governments results, states and the final results upon which INEC’s Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood based his declaration of Tinubu as winner of the poll.

However, a lot of these results which were blurred were Certified True Copies released by the electoral umpire to the petitioners.

Although, the respondents which include INEC, Tinubu and his Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima and the APC had objected to the admissibility of the documents, the court however, accepted the documents, stating that ruling in the objections would be made during the delivery of the final judgement in the petition.

Amongst the major grouse of Obi and LP was that INEC failed to transmit results of the presidential election real time from the polling units to the INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) portals as promised and in accordance with the regulations and guidelines for the 2023.

While they played video clips of interviews and press conference showing Mahmood and an INEC Commissioner for Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, assuring on electronic transmission of the 2023 general elections, they brought in experts to support their allegations that election results particularly that of the presidential were not transmitted on February 25 because of alleged manipulation of the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) machine by INEC.

At Friday’s proceedings which marked the end of the petitioners’ case, there 12 witness, Mr. Tanko Yunusa, who served as the Chief Spokesman of the Labour Party Presidential Election Council as well as the National Director of Media in the party, maintained that the election process was characterised with irregularities and substantial non-compliance with the electoral laws.

It was his claim that INEC allocated votes to all the presidential candidates, adding that, “If the results were uploaded as required by the law, my party would have gotten more votes than what was allocated to us.”

He told the court that his wish was for the entire result of the election to be voided, including the votes “allocated” to the presidential candidate of his party, Obi.

However, after the evidence of the 13 petitioners’ witness and his subsequent cross examination by the respondents, lead counsel to Obi and LP, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, announced that they would be closing their case against President Tinubu.

Following agreement of all the parties, the Justice Tsammani-led panel adjourned till July 3 for the respondents to open their defences.