The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal Abuja has adjourned till Monday for the continuation of the petitions filed by the peoples Democratic Party and it’s Presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar till Monday 22nd May, 2023.
The Tribunal also adjourned to the same date the petition filed by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate Peter Obi, challenging the outcome of election.
The five-member panel of Justices of the court led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, the presiding justice of the tribunal said the adjournment is to allow the parties to consolidate the modalities for the main hearing . The parties are expected to identify and agree on the number of witnesses that will testify, the time to be allocated, for examination and cross-examination.
At the resumed hearing on Obi’s petition on Saturday, all respondents filed and adopted applications and counter affidavits nudging the court to dismiss Obi’s petition and reply to their application.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) through its counsel Abubakar Mahmoud, filed four applications against Obi’s petition. The first one seeks to strike out certain paragraphs of the petition, the second is to strike out ground 2 of the petition, the third application is praying for the striking out of the petitioners reply, and the fourth application is seeking permission to make some minor amendments to its list of witnesses.
Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima (second and third respondents) have three applications to strike out or dismiss Obi’s petition for being incompetent, to strike out paragraphs of the petition, and to strike out entire reply filed by petitioners to their application
The fourth respondent, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is also seeking to dismiss or strike out Obi’s petition being incompetent supported.
Adeniyi Akintola, member of the counsel for the APC, also informed the court that in line with the Justices’ directives, all the parties have agreed on the number of witnesses and the time to be taken for examination and cross-examination examination during the hearing.
The parties proposed modalities for the hearing before the court. The LP and Obi is calling three to ten witnesses , the INEC have five witnesses, Tinubu and Shettima have 21 witnesses and the APC have seven witnesses.
Obi’s lawyer, Awa Kalu, however, decried that the INEC was yet to make available certified documents as requested. But, counsel to INEC, Mahmoud however, said there was no hiccup in accessing the documents.
Justice Tsammani reserved ruling on the applications seeking to dismiss Obi’s petition to the final day of judgment.
The tribunal will also give its final ruling on the modalities for the main hearing on Monday, and Obi and Atiku’s application for live broadcast of the proceedings on Monday , 22nd May.
The pre-hearing session is expected to end on Monday, and the court will decide the modalities for the main hearing.
Meanwhile, the PDP and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, proposed to call not more than 100 witnesses for his petition challenging the 2023 presidential election
Also, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is proposing to call 22 witnesses for the petitioners (Atiku and PDP), 39 for the second respondents and 25 for the third respondents on Atiku’s petition.
The parties made this proposal at the resumed pre-hearing session on Saturday.
Counsel to Atiku, Chris Uche said, “For the petitioners, we intend to call not more than 100 witnesses, since most of them are just to adopt written statements”.
He also noted that though the the law permits seven weeks to present their witnesses, they would need only about three weeks or less to do so.
“The issues are narrower and are mostly constitutional; so they won’t require much time to determine. For instance, the issue of FCT,” he told the court.
Uche, also suggested that there should be no cross examination of a repsonsdents witness by another respondent, which was countered by counsel to Tinubu.
Justice Tsammani, after hearing the proposals adjourned till May 22nd, the continuation of the pre-hearing of PDP’s and Atiku’s petition against Tinubu.
This is because all parties are yet to agree and harmonise proposed schedule and modalities for the main hearing; the number of witnesses that will testify, the time to be allocated, and time for examination and cross-examination of witnesses.
The petitioners and 1st respondents (INEC) have met and agreed on number of witness and time allocation. Chris Uche counsel to Atiku said the parties intend to call not more than 100 witnesses.
But counsel to APC, and Counsel to Tinubu said they were not privy to the meeting between the petitioners and the first respondent, hence they have some issues they are yet to agree on.
But, all the parties proposed to allocate more time for the main examination of star witnesses by about 30 minutes, some of them to be subpoenaed, to present their testimony on oath.
