The Tribunal strikes out 10 out of Obi/LP’s 13 witnesses for lack of evidence, dismisses LP’s 25% FCT votes claimPresidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has struck out the evidence of 10 out of the 13 witnesses called by Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) in support of their petition against the election of President Bola Tinubu.
In a judgment delivered today September 6, the court held that the witnesses, who were subpoenaed at the instance of the petitioners, had their written statements, which contained their evidence, were not filed along or frontloaded with the petition within the 21 days allowed by the Electoral Act 2022.
The court, in the lead judgment currently being read by Justice Haruna Tsammani, also rejected the documents, including the report of analysis, tendered by the petitioners through the affected 10 witnesses.
The court also held that some of the witnesses are not only persons with interest in the outcome of the case, the reports they tendered were made during the pendency of the case.
The court also dismissed the Labour Party’s 25% FCT votes claim stating that the FCT residents have no special privileges as the petitioners claimed. The ruling was made in response to a petition filed by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, who challenged the election of President Bola Tinubu. Obi and LP had argued that Tinubu should be disqualified from being president because he did not win 25% of the votes cast in the FCT.
