- By Kamil Opeyemi
The presidential election petition tribunal has dismissed evidences of 10 out of the 13 provided by the candidate of the Labour Party Mr. Peter Obi at the ongoing judgement of the tribunal in Abuja.
Justice Haruna Tsammani held that witnesses 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, and 13 subpoenaed by Labour Party are not witnesses of the court. Their statements were out of time.
In a judgment, the court noted 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.
This is also coming after the PEPC threw out the double nomination petition of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) against the All Progressives Congress (APC) Vice Presidential candidate and current Vice President, Kashim Shettima, for being incompetent.
The tribunal had earlier ruled that Obi and the Labour Party failed to list the specific polling units where the rigging took place.