5th Day of Hearing at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal 2023

• The court sat at about 2:05pm. Justice Bello Mohammed encouraged everyone to be in accordance with the court to ensure the smooth running of the proceedings.

• The Petition of Peter Obi and Labour Party with Petition Number CA/PEPC/03/2023 was called.

• Peter Obi represented the petitioners (himself and LP).

• Saturday Monsigna represented the 4th respondent.

• Patrick Ikwueto SAN led the petitioners (Peter Obi and Labour Party) legal team.

• Abubakar Mahmoud SAN led the 1st respondent (INEC) legal team.

• Wole Olanipekun SAN led the 2nd and 3rd respondents (Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima) legal team.

• Lateef Fagbemi SAN led the 4th respondent (All Progressives Congress) legal team.

• Chief Awa Kalu SAN and Dr. Valerie Azinge SAN conducted the proceedings on behalf of the petitioners.

• The petitioners brought an application pursuant to a motion which they filed on May 22, 2023 which borders on interrogatories (written questions that are sent to opposing parties to answer). All the respondents opposed to this move. Irrespective of their opposition, the court agreed to hear the motion since the respondents had not filed any reply to the application.

• Going forward, the petitioners informed the court that they will continue tendering INEC certified true copies of Forms EC8As with respect to other states they will be contending at the tribunal. Recall that since Day 3 of the hearing, the petitioners have tendered Forms EC8As for 12 states of the federation.

• On this day, certified true copies of INEC Forms EC8A documents of one hundred and fifty-seven (157) local governments comprising of eight (8) states of the federation inclusive of Ebonyi (23), Nasarawa (13), Delta (25), Kaduna (23), Imo (27), Ondo (18), Sokoto (7), and Kogi (21) States were tendered by the petitioners.

• All the respondents (INEC, Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and APC), through their counsels, objected to the tendering of these documents and will reserve the reasons for their objection until the time of their final written addresses.

• Irrespective of the objections, the court admitted all the INEC Forms EC8As for one hundred and fifty-seven (157) local governments comprising of eight (8) states of the federation and marked them as exhibits accordingly.

• At this point, the petitioners were done with their documents for the day and sought for the adjournment of the hearing. There was no objection by all the respondents to the application for adjournment.

• In furtherance to this, the court adjourned till Tuesday June 6, 2023 at 2pm for continuation of hearing.

• The matter came to an end at about 5:30pm and the court wished everyone safe journeys back.

5th Day of Hearing (Monday 5th June, 2023)

Credit

UC Maxwell

Weyimi Lube

Kelechi

Ifueko

1 Million March Crew

Vawulence Space

Jimmy

Agboga Olayemi

Kolade Kayode

Lyfatubely

Jobidient

Jennifer