The Presidential Election Petition Court on Saturday declined the request by the Labour Party, LP and its candidate, Peter Obi to serve specific written questions on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, related to its plans, preparations and conduct of the 2023 presidential elections.
The questions, known legally as “Interrogatories”, were to aid Obi and the Labour Party in its petition challenging INEC’s return of APC’s Bola Tinubu as President.
The respondents, which include INEC, Tinubu, Kashim Shetima and the APC had all objected to the motion requesting for leave to serve the interrogatories. According to them, such motions could only be entertained in the pre-hearing stage, which had since lapsed.
However, Obi’s lawyer had argued that the motion was filed on May 22, 2023, before the close of the pre-hearing.
In resolving the matter, Justice Haruna Tsammani who prepared the lead ruling held that the motion by Obi and the Labour Party was as good as abandoned. Referring to several authorities, the court held that the petitioners had failed to move their motion or draw the attention of the court to it. It noted that simply filing a motion is not enough as it is the responsibility of the applicant to move or request to move his application since the court cannot suo moto (on its own) hear a party’s motion.
The decision which was unanimous also held that the petitioners failed to disclose the extreme circumstances that would warrant the court to grant leave for hearing of a motion outside the pre-hearing session, noting that simply relying on fair hearing falls flat in the face of the rules and procedure for hearing election petitions.
The Justices highlighted that it was a clear case of tardiness on the part of Obi’s lawyers which the court cannot help them .
After the ruling, the court proceeded to view the video evidence presented by Obi showing the INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmoud Yakubu pledging to upload election results. Yakubu was seen in the video of a live TV interview saying, “there is no going back on the deployment of BVAS for voter accreditation. No going back on transmission of results to I-rev real-time on Election Day”
Another video evidence displayed before the court showed INEC’s National Commissioner, Festus Okoye explaining the role of the BVAS to accredit voters, scan results and upload same to the result viewing portal I-Rev
