Today, the Abuja Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal begins pre-hearing a petition challenging the outcome of the February 25 Election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission said the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Tinubu won the election with 8,794,726 votes.
The Commission declared that the candidate of the People Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar came second with 6,984,520 votes and that the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, was second with 6,101,533 votes.
However, Atiku, Obi and other parties rejected the results announced by INEC. They also appealed to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to void Tinubu’s victory.
On what to expect at today’s proceedings, a senior lawyer told one of Punch correspondents on Sunday that:
“The only thing they will do is to schedule the hearing, the number of witnesses, how many minutes the witness will use, and how to admit the documents; that’s what they call pre-trial.
“They are going to prepare a timetable for the hearing of the cases, the number of days to be spent by the petitioners, the number of days to be paid by the respondents, how do we take in the documents, certified true copy of the papers, are they going to be admitted like that or if there is an objection, how do we object to document?
“Will the court write a ruling on objection immediately, or will the court write it in the cause of the main judgment? Those are the things that will happen tomorrow (Monday)”
Cc: Punch Ng
