Setback for Peter Obi as Tribunal dismisses his request to interrogate INEC

 

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja, has dismissed an application the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, filed for permission to interrogate the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on the technology it deployed for the conduct of the general elections.

Obi and LP are petitioners in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, challenging the election which brought President Bola Ahmed Tinubu into power.

Respondents are INEC, Mr. Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC).

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Ruling on the application, the five-member panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani held that it lacked the jurisdiction to grant the request as it was brought outside the pre-hearing session and, therefore, incompetent.

“It is an afterthought on the grounds that the pre-hearing period to file such an application elapsed on May 22.

“I have not disputed the fact that they did not call the attention of the court during the pre-hearing session.

“It is for the applicant to take a step towards the hearing of his motion on notice. The court cannot do that for him,” the court held.

The court also held that the applicants failed to disclose any extreme circumstance that stopped them from filing within the statutory time.

In a unanimous decision, the court stated that motions cannot be heard at the hearing session and, as such, can be deemed abandoned.

”Their application is incompetent, and the court lacks the jurisdiction to entertain it, and accordingly, the application is struck out,” it held.

The petitioners, among other reasons for disputing the outcome of the elections, are accusing the electoral umpire of non-compliance with the Electoral Act.

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Their concerns also included failure to transmit the results of the presidential election in real-time on the INEC results viewing portal as assured.

In their effort to support the grounds of their petition, the petitioners had asked the court to permit them to question INEC on the technology deployed to conduct the election, including the quality of the ICT experts who oversaw the conduct.

In two applications, the petitioners, through their lawyer, Patrick Ikweto, SAN, urged the court to order INEC to supply the names and other details of its ICT professionals that deployed electronic devices for the conduct of the election.

Specifically, the petitioners maintained that given INEC’s reply to their petition, it should be compelled to answer 12 questions.

They added the date the electoral body conducted functionality tests on the system it deployed for the elections and the names and details of those that conducted the test.

(NAN)

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