The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, have accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of failing to provide requested documents in their ongoing petition challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.
The LP and Obi raised the concern before the Presidential Election Petition Court, stating that without the necessary documents from INEC, they cannot proceed with their case.
Counsel for the LP, Mr. Jubrin Okutepa, informed the court that despite numerous requests, INEC did not provide all the requested documents. He stated that INEC only recently released a few reports from Lagos and Gombe, which had been certified since May 29. Okutepa emphasized that his client had paid for most of the requested documents and called for the court’s intervention, suggesting that INEC was intentionally delaying proceedings.
In response, counsel for INEC, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, stated that they had received a letter from the petitioners on May 15 but had not received any further correspondence. Mahmoud assured the court that INEC had provided all the documents requested by the subpoenaed witnesses and had not denied the petitioners any document. He urged the petitioners to cease their lamentation and suggested that a meeting between senior counsels be held to address the issues raised.
Mr. Wole Olanipakun, counsel for Tinubu and Shettima, promised to facilitate a meeting between senior counsels to resolve the matter. The court urged all parties to reach a better understanding and continue with the proceedings in a spirit of cooperation.
During the hearing, the petitioners called their seventh witness, Loretta Ogah, an architect with Amazon Web Services. However, objections were raised by the respondents regarding the adoption of her witness statement, as they claimed to have just received the documents. The court allowed the witness’s employment letter, resumé, health status reports of AWS dashboard of cloud services, and certificates of compliance to be admitted as evidence.
The court adjourned the proceedings until the following day to allow for the cross-examination of the witness and further hearing of the petition.
