The Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi and his party on Tuesday tendered election results of the presidential election from 17 states’ Local Government Areas across the country.
The Local Government election results for the February 25 presidential election, contained in forms EC8Bs, duly certified by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 17 states were tendered by the petitioners before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja to prove their allegations contained in their joint petition challenging the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
At the resumed hearing of the petition on Tuesday Obi and his Party, through their counsel, Ben Anachebe (SAN), tendered, INEC’s certified true copies of form EC8Bs, been election results from 21 LGAs of Adamawa state, eight LGAs of Bayelsa state, 21 LGAs of Benue state, 21 LGAs of Kogi and 11 LGAs of Nasarawa state.
Other documents tendered by the petitioners are election results from 25 LGAs of Niger state, 18 LGAs of Ondo state, 23 LGAs of Sokoto state, 25 LGAs of Delta state, 11 LGAs of Ekiti state, 25 LGAs of Imo state and 21 LGAs of Kaduna state.
A further breakdown of the INEC certified forms EC8Bs tendered by Obi and his party are those from 27 LGAs of Oyo state, 18 LGAs of Cross River, 16 LGAs of Edo state, 31 LGAs of Akwa Ibom state and 20 LGAs of Lagos state.
The respondents in the petition, INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the APC, through their various counsel, objected to the admissibility of all the documents tendered by the petitioners and reserved to give their reasons in their final written address.
The five-member panel of Justices of the court, headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani however admitted all the INEC-certified documents tendered by the petitioners as exhibits.
Obi and the Labour Party had, in the previous proceedings tendered INEC-certified forms EC8As (State election results) from a number of states across the country in their petition challenging Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
The petitioners are alleging that the presidential election was conducted in gross violation of the Constitution, the Electoral Act and INEC’s guidelines for the conduct of the election.
They also said Tinubu did not score 25 per cent of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory as stated in the Electoral Act and as such cannot be returned as the winner of the election.
