The Presidential Election Petitions Court on Tuesday knocked the People’s Democratic Party and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar for the poor and disorderly arrangement of electoral documents to be tendered before it to prove its petition against President Bola Tinubu.
At the resumption of the proceedings, Atiku’s lawyer, Eyitayo Jegede announced readiness to tender Form EC8Es starting with Kogi state (10 LGAs), but the court frowned at the arrangement of the documents. Form EC8E is the last form which is used for the declaration of final results.
Justice Haruna Tsammani, chairman of five-man panel of judges observed that his scheduled list of documents was not arranged serially according to LGAs. He observed that while Jegede sought to tender documents for 10 LGAs in Kogi state, as evidence, his schedule showed 21 LGAs.
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Atiku’s lawyer explained that he has not been able to get other documents from the Independent National Electoral Commission, adding that those he was able to get from the electoral umpire was the ones he sought to tender today. He said his tendering of documents was based on what was made available to him by INEC.
He decried that he had issued subpoena against INEC and already paid over N6 million for it. The panel asked him to take time to schedule his documents properly.
Jegede therefore sought for an adjournment of the hearing on the petition to Wednesday to enable him have a more comprehensive schedule together with the documents expected from INEC.
The application for adjournment was then granted by the court.
Atiku, has so far called 9 witnesses and tendered several electoral documents including the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine report for the 36 states, including the FCT.
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