APC Lawyers Laugh As Tribunal Judge Calls Obi’s Witnesses ‘Incompetent’

Laughter filled the courtroom Wednesday as lawyers of the All Progressives Congress (APC) received a favourable ruling from Justice Haruna Tsammani, the chair of the five-member panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court.

The judge deemed the witnesses presented by the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, as incompetent, resulting in chuckling from APC’s legal team.

In Obi’s main suit which seeks nullification of President Bola Tinubu’s election, the five-man panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani first addressed the preliminary objections by the respondents (Independent National Electoral Commission, Tinubu and All Progressives Congress) against the competence of the witnesses presented by Obi.

The respondents argued that some of Obi’s witnesses had not filed their witness statements on oath along with the petition, as required by the Electoral Act of 2022.

THE WHISTLER reports that before the PEPC adjourned for the adoption of the address by parties, Obi had produced several witnesses including a cloud engineer, INEC presiding officers, a cyber security expert and a professor of Mathematics who claimed that 18,088 polling unit results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal were blurred, thereby shortchanging Obi by 2.5 million votes.

But Justice Haruna Tsammani held that electoral laws stipulate that an election petition shall be filed within 21 days after the declaration of a presidential election alongside its witnesses.

The petitioners had argued that their subpoenaed witnesses could be called to testify even after proceedings in an election had commenced.

But Justice Haruna Tsammani said the list of witnesses must be accompanied by a petition.

“The witness statements are incompetent and struck out,” Justice Haruna said, throwing some APC lawyers in brief laughter.

But the judge called them to order.

The judge also held that the documents admitted through Obi’s witnesses were incompetent because most of them were interested parties on the side of Obi.

The five-man panel of the PEPC will make their separate findings before a final decision is made on the petition.