TRIBUNAL: INEC Chairman Refusing Obi’s Subpoena To Release Documents, Lawyer Tells Panel

On Wednesday, the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja intervened when lawyers representing the flagbearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, blamed each other for seeming slow progress in LP’s petition against President Bola Tinubu.

The PEPC asked the senior lawyers to coordinate themselves because their conduct serve as examples to “junior lawyers” that accompany them to the proceedings.

When the proceedings commenced, Peter Obi’s lawyer, Audu Anuga SAN, tendered as evidence several blurry polling unit results downloaded from the INEC Results Viewing Portal, IRev, and INEC certified but which are not linked to any Local Government Area.

He also tendered certified IREV reports for Gombe and Kaduna State as well as IREV certificate of compliance for seven states, excluding Akwa Ibom.

Continuing, he tendered duly certified Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, reports and certificate of compliance for 28 states including the Federal Capital Territory.

All the documents were opposed by INEC as well as the legal team of President Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress.

But the court admitted them as Obi’s evidence.

Obi’s lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu SAN, then stood up, saying that he was yet to get all the electoral documents for his case and that the INEC Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood, has refused to accept a subpoena from the bailiff of the court in that regard.

He added, however, that an agreement has been reached between him and INEC lead counsel, A.B. Mahmoud SAN, for the subpoena (court summon) to be served on any member of his team.

“My lord, I drew the attention of the INEC lead counsel, A.B Mahmoud to the failure of the office of the INEC Chairman, to accept the service of a subpoena to produce more electoral documents despite the efforts of the bailiffs of this court.

“He (Mahmoud) graciously asked me to give him a copy of the subpoena but I did not have an extra copy to give him now and he asked me to give to any member of his team,” he said.

Uzoukwu said he does not have extra copy of the subpoena in court but assured he will send a copy to the INEC legal team after today’s proceedings.

“I am confident that he will do the needful for us to continue tomorrow,” Uzoukwu said while asking for adjournment of his case.

Another INEC counsel, Oluwakemi Pinheiro SAN, stood up to counter Uzoukwu, saying it has become a habit that when the petitioners want to seek an adjournment, they blame his client.

“It cannot be true that a subpoena to be served on INEC chairman, was refused,” Pinheiro said, adding that in People’s Democratic party’s case, subpoenas was served on INEC chairman and it was not refused.

“The question of deliberately refusing service is not correct,” the INEC lawyer continued.

He told the court that the INEC Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood has no interest in Obi’s petition.

Taking a dig at Obi’s team, he said rather than them outrightly asking for adjournment over their inability to conduct their case, they are throwing blames.

“This is two weeks and he has only called three witnesses out of the 50 witnesses they said they would call,” Pinheiro said.

Livy Uzoukwu stood up in anger again to express shock at what Oluwakemi Pinheiro said.

According to him, he made it clear that the bailiff of court could not serve the INEC Chairman with the subpoena.

He asked the INEC lawyer and the court to verify his assertion from the bailiff of the PEPC.

But the five-man panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani told parties that he has been observing that lawyers representing Obi and INEC have been denigrating each other since the proceedings commenced.

“If there is anything that INEC is doing, you know what to do,” Justice Tsammani told Uzoukwu.

In a bid to calm their nerves, the panel told lawyers to “calm your tempers” , reminding them that whatever direction, the outcome of the case would go, “we are still friends.”

The lawyer representing Tinubu, Wole Olanipekun SAN did not object to the call for adjournment.

The court subsequently adjourned to Thursday for continuation of hearing.

THE WHISTLER reports that in line with PEPC pre-hearing report directive, the petitioners challenging Tinubu’s election have 3 weeks to produce their evidence as well as present their witnesses.

There are three petitioners before the court including Atiku Abubakar and Allied Peoples Movement.

While Obi’s lawyer promised to call 50 witnesses, Atiku promised to field 100 witness with APM promising to only bring one witness.

Obi’s team has, so far, presented three witnesses, including a lawyer (who spoke on a US District Court judgement on Tinubu’s bank account), a Senior Reporter/Editor, Lucky Ukpewo from Channels Television as well as a software engineer to substantiate alleged non-compliance to the Electoral Act by INEC.

On Atiku’s part, he has presented 20 witnesses as of Tuesday.

Obi is alleging that his actual votes were altered in over 18,000 polling units.