The Presidential Election Petition Court has declined to accept a copy of the report on the 2023 presidential election submitted by the European Union (EU) Election Observers Mission, which was presented by Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP).
The tribunal ruled that the document had been obtained by the petitioners from its registry, and it was certified by a staff member of the court who did not have the original custody of the document produced by the EU mission.
The court also rejected 18088 blurred results sheets that were tendered by the petitioners on the grounds that these result sheets were not linked to any specific polling units as required, and the petitioners did not specify the relevant polling units in their petition.
The court asserted that the petitioners falsely claimed that they couldn’t identify the polling units due to the blurred result sheets. It noted that one of the petitioners’ witnesses had actually produced a report in which he analyzed the same results, which he stated were obtained from INEC’s results viewing platform.
Furthermore, the court pointed out that since the petitioners acknowledged that their agents had signed for and collected copies of the result sheets, they could not feign ignorance of the affected polling units. Instead, they deliberately chose not to specify these polling units in their petition.
KanyiDaily recalls that the Presidential Tribunal also ruled that Peter Obi failed to prove that President Bola Tinubu was convicted of drug trafficking in the United States.