Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi have accused the Independent National Election Commission, inec, of biased and outright attempt to frustrate their efforts to access the documents they need to prove their case in court against the president-elect, Bloa Tinubu.
The Labour Party counsel Livy Uzoukwu, at the resumption of the hearing at the tribunal, Wednesday, informed the court that the scheduled meeting to agree on documents to be tendered for hearing had not yielded much results because the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had only made available 30% of the documents required from them.
Uzoukwu added that this is contrary to the commitment by the INEC Chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, that all documents required shall be made available.
He stated that the party is yet to get documents with respect to Rivers State, where he said the Resident Electoral Commissioner said there are no forms EC8A available to be given but is yet to put that in writing despite requests to do so.
However, counsel for INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, stated that he is surprised by the allegations of the Labour Party’s counsel because they did not show up for the meeting as agreed and walked out of the rescheduled meeting.
Mahmoud added that the documents for Rivers and Sokoto states were indeed provided, but the Labour Party refused to pay the sum of ₦1.5 million for Sokoto State, and Form EC8A for Rivers State has not been given to them.
He also noted that some documents were given to the party, but they refused to collect them until they were complete, and he assured the court that they were
The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPC) sitting in Abuja has adjourned the pre-hearing of the petition filed by the candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, against President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Obi is challenging the declaration of Tinubu candidate of the All Progressive Party (APC) as the winner of the 2023 presidential election
The tribunal, headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani, adjourned the date to Friday, May 19, due to the failure of parties to agree on documents, among other reasons.
With reports from the Guardian