Atiku, PDP Reduce Witnesses To 30, Close Case Tomorrow

Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar  and his party will on Thursday, June 22 close their case in the petition they jointly filed challenging the declaration of President Bola Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.

The petitioners, according to a pre-hearing report were supposed to close their case on Tuesday but, their lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche (SAN) brought to the notice of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) that they lost two days out of the days allotted to them and asked that the two days be returned to them.

The petitioners, who told the court during the pre-hearing session that they would call 100 witnesses have called only 25 witnesses so far.

Speaking with newsmen, counsel to the petitioners said that they might call additional five witnesses to have a round figure of 30 witnesses.

Uche said that some of the documents to be tendered in the remaining two days would take the place of the remaining 70 witnesses.

“We are closing our case on Thursday, it was supposed to end today (Tuesday) but because we lost two days, one of which was the June 12 public holiday, the court graciously extended our time by two days,” Uche told newsmen after the proceedings.

Earlier in the proceedings, the petitioners lamented the difficulties encountered in getting Certified True Copies (CTC) of documents out of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in aid of their joint petition challenging Tinubu’s election.

At the resumed hearing of the petition, counsel to Atiku and his party told the court that getting materials from INEC is like getting weapons from opponents.

He told the court that getting documents from INEC is very difficult, but commended the legal team of the electoral body, headed by Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) for their assistance in getting some of the documents from INEC.

Uche applied for a stand-down in the proceedings to enable the petitioners to mark the deluge of documents made available to them Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, counsel to INEC, Kemi Pinhero (SAN) told the court in his submissions that INEC officials brought the documents from all over the country and that the petitioners are yet to pay for the certification of the documents.

He said, it is incumbent on the petitioners to prepare a schedule of documents they wish to tender.

The court rose for about ten minutes to enable parties in the petition to put heads together and find a way forward on what to do with the documents and when parties came back, Uche reported to the court that they have agreed that the petitioners go back with the documents, prepare a schedule of documents and mark them for tendering on Wednesday.

The five-member panel of justices of the court, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani adjourned till Wednesday, June 21 for continuation of hearing in the petition.