..We’ve only got 30 per cent of documentssays Obi
Only 30 per cent of the documents required from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has been supplied to the Labour Party (LP) in its effort to prove that Peter Obi, its candidate, rather than Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the February 23 presidential election.
This much was revealed to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), sitting in Abuja on Wednesday, before it adjourned to Friday, May 19 for continuation of pre-hearing in the petition, which is coming after INEC declared Tinubu winner of the election on March 1.
It was a day the leadership tussle within the Labour Party (LP), came to the fore with embattled National Chairman, Julius Abure, being confronted by Lamidi Apapa, laying claime to his office at the court room, leading to a grand drama, which almost disrupted the day’s proceedings, but for the quick intervention of court officials.
Justice Haruna Tsamani, leading the five-man panel of the appellate court, now serving as the PEPT, who had last week adjourned the pre-hearing session on Obi and the LP’s petition till May 17 at the instance of the petitioners, on Wednesday, refused to acknowledge the representation of the party aside, as who should speak for it became contentious, but instead, recognised Obi alone.
At the resumed hearing, counsel for Labour Party, Livy Uzoukwu informed the court that the scheduled meeting to agree on documents to be tendered for hearing had not yielded much results as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had only made available 30 per cent of the documents required from them, contrary to commitment by the INEC Chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu, that all documents required would be made available.
He further added that the party is yet to get documents with respect to Rivers State where he said the Resident Electoral Commissioner said there were no forms EC8A available to be given but was yet to put that in writing despite request to do so.
Counsel for INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, however, said he was taken aback by the allegations of the LP lawyer, as they they did not show up for the meeting as agreed, and walked out of the rescheduled meeting, adding that the documents for Rivers and Sokoto states, were indeed provided, but the LP refused to pay the sum of 1.5million naira for Sokoto State, and the Form EC8A for Rivers State, have not been given to them.
Stating that some documents were given to the party, but that they refused to collect it until it was complete, he assured the court that they were doing everything possible to assist an open manner and that they are ready to pay any amount of money for a document
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