The petition of the Peoples Democratic Party and their presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, encountered an unexpected obstacle in court on Tuesday.
The stumbling block came due to the presentation of unorganized documents to the Presidential Elections Petition Court.
The parties are contesting the results of the February 25 election, which saw Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress declared president by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
During the latest hearing, PDP’s lead counsel, Chris Uche, presented the certified true copies of the INEC voters register for FCT in 14 batches, which the court admitted as evidence.
However, the court rejected Uche’s attempt to present a series of polling unit results from Abia state, criticizing the poor organization of the documents.
In response, Uche explained to the court that acquiring electoral materials from INEC in a timely manner proved difficult.
He asked for the court’s understanding, suggesting that the documents be accepted and then properly numbered by the court registry after the day’s proceedings.
Despite Uche’s plea, INEC’s lawyer, Kemi Pinero, disagreed, insisting that it was the parties’ responsibility to sort electoral documents after their receipt from the commission.
He also highlighted that the PDP had yet to pay for the certification of the documents.
The panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani clarified that it was the duty of the petitioning party’s legal team to create a document schedule once the documents had been provided by INEC.
With the issue still unresolved, the petitioners agreed to reorganize the documents before presenting them again in court on the following day, Wednesday.
This agreement was confirmed with the respondents, and the hearing was adjourned until June 21.
Time is running out for the petitioners, who have less than a week to finalize their case against Tinubu.
