May 20, (THEWILL) – The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have indicated plans to call “no more than 100 witnesses” in the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC).
THEWILL reports that Atiku had filed a joint petition before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja, to challenge the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the February 25 presidential poll.
Atiku and the PDP had in a joint petition, marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, applied for the withdrawal of the Certificate of Return that was issued to Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
They maintained that the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election was “invalid because of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022”.
“The 2nd Respondent was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast at the election. The 2nd Respondent was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest the election,” they said, while listing grounds the court should consider nullifying Tinubu’s election.
Addressing the court on Saturday, Counsel for the Petitioners, Chris Uche, said all the parties had met, and considered and agreed on the number of witnesses, duration and examination of witnesses.
Uche added that though the new time given them to call the witnesses is seven weeks, they would need three weeks since the issues were getting narrower.
All the parties in the suit agreed to streamline the number of witnesses as well as the duration of each party to call witnesses.
For the evidence in chief, they categorised them into 30 minutes for the lead witness because they will tender and identify documents.
They also proposed 15 minutes for each respondent for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination of the lead witness of the petitioners. In addition, 10 minutes was proposed for other witnesses of the petitioners, as well as 10 minutes for cross-examination of these witnesses, by the respondents.
For the star witnesses of the respondents — the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu and the APC — 30 minutes was proposed, while 30 minutes was proposed for cross-examination of the respondents’ witnesses, by the respondents.
INEC said it has two witnesses that will testify, while the counsel to the President-elect said it had 39 witnesses ready.
For the President-elect, the report of any star witness should be made available 48 hours before the hearing.
The schedule of documents to be filed must be given to other parties before the hearing and calling of witnesses.
The examination of experts/star witnesses was fixed for 20 minutes, while cross-examination by respondents was scheduled for 30 minutes. The re-examination was fixed at five minutes.
Furthermore, the examination of non-experts/star witnesses was scheduled for 10 minutes; cross-examination, 15 minutes; and re-examination at five minutes.
