The Presidential Election Petition Court has elected to consolidate the three petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP), and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), seeking to nullify the outcome of 2023 presidential election.
The President-elect Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had vehemently opposed the proposal by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) to consolidate the three surviving petitions challenging the conduct and outcome of the February 25 election.
But the court, in a pre-hearing report issued and read on Tuesday by Justice Haruna Tsammani, the five-member panel in a unanimous decision, dismissed objections Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and APC, raised against the the merger of the petitions.
The court held that Justice of the cases demanded that they should be consolidated and dealt with as one petition since they all relate to the same election.
The commencement of hearing in the petition by Obi and the LP on May 30.
Obi had earlier said he would need seven weeks to present his case through 50 witnesses, the court, in its ruling, reduced the period to three weeks, even as it gave the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Tinubu and Senator Kashim Shettima, five days each to defend the petition.
Likewise, the court gave the 4th respondent in the case, Kabiru Masari, three days to also defend himself.
However, PEPC stated that trial in the petition will end on August 5 when lawyers to parties are to adopt their final written addresses, following which a date will be set for judgment.
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