The Presidential Election Petition Court on Monday admitted the presidential election results Forms EC8A of local government Areas from 8 more States tendered by the Labour Party (LP) and Mr Peter Obi in support of their petition against the election of President Bola Tinubu.
The election results were admitted as exhibits amidst vehement objections from the Independent National Electoral Commission ,INEC, who issued the certified true copy of the results , President Tinubu and All Progressive Congress APC who are the respondents.
At the resumed hearing of the petition on Monday, Obi and his Party, through their counsel, tendered certified true copies of form EC8As, been election results from Ebonyi, Nasarawa, Delta, Kaduna, Imo, Ondo, Sokoto and Kogi states.
A breakdown of the INEC certified forms EC8As tendered and admitted as exhibits by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja are those from 13 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Ebonyi, 13 LGAs of Nasarawa state, 25 LGAs of Delta, 23 forms EC8As from Kaduna, 27 from Imo, 18 from Ondo, seven LGAs of Sokoto state and from 21 LGAs of Kogi state.
The petitioners, through their counsel tendered the documents, all duly certified and signed by INEC in line with the agreement of parties in the petition as contained in the pre-hearing report as well as paragraph 46(4) of the first schedule to the Electoral Act.
The respondents, INEC, Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC) raised objection to the admissibility of the documents and reserved their reasons for their objections to the final address stage.
The petitioners had, last week tendered INEC certified forms EC8As from Rivers, Benue, Cross River, Niger, Osun, Ekiti, Adamawa, Bayelsa, Oyo, Edo, Lagos and Akwa Ibom states.
Obi and his party, in their petition are challenging the declaration of Tinubu by INEC as the winner of the February 25 presidential election alleging that the election was conducted in gross violation of the Constitution, the Electoral Act and INEC’s guidelines for the conduct of the election.
They also said Tinubu did not score 25 percent vote cast in the Federal Capital Territory as stated in the Electoral Act and as such cannot be returned as the winner of the election.