Supreme Court accepts final presidential election results as exhibits in Obi’s petition against Tinubu’s victory.

The Labour Party’s (LP) candidate for president in the most recent presidential election, Peter Obi, on Wednesday submitted the final, collated presidential election results that were used to declare Tinubu the election’s winner in a new attempt to support his request for the annulment of the election of President Bola Tinubu.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shetima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC), who are the four respondents in the petition, did not object to the final results being accepted by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).

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The four respondents did not object to declaring the crucial documents to have been read in open court, in addition to not objecting to the final presidential election results reported in form EC8DA.

The documents and a number of exhibits were submitted by Obi and the Labour Party LP through their attorney, Professor Paul Ananaba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, in order to support the petition contesting Tinubu’s election.

Surprisingly, the respondents accepted tendering the final result without raising any objections, even though they vehemently objected to the admission of collated election results from the ward, local government, and state levels.

The forms EC8D used by the electoral body, which contained the collated results for the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), were also offered and admitted as exhibits at the proceedings on Wednesday.

Obi, who was physically present in the courtroom to observe proceedings, continued to fight at the PEPC hearing on his petition against Tinubu and shifted his focus from ward-collated election results to local government election results and state-collated results before submitting the final result as exhibits in support of his petition.

Form EC8C, which was used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the presidential election on February 25, contains the results that have been compiled at the local government levels.

The 13 states include Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, and Ondo where the ward collated results were submitted and admitted as exhibits.

Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Ekiti, and Delta make up the remaining states.

Obi submitted compiled results for eight local government areas in Bayelsa, twenty-three in Benue, eighteen in Cross River, ten in Ebonyi, eighteen in Edo, twenty in Lagos, and twenty-five in Niger State.

18 are in Ondo, 33 are in Oyo, 23 are in Rivers, 23 are in Sokoto, 16 are in Ekiti, and 25 are in Delta, among others.

Even though INEC, Tinubu, Kashim Shetima, and the All Progressives Congress (APC), who are respondents in the petition, expressed their objections to the admission of the collated results as exhibits in favour of Obi and the Labour Party, Presiding Justice of the Court Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani accepted them as evidence.

The petition hearing will continue on June 8 according to court chairman Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani.

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Later, in a statement to reporters, Obi’s attorney, Professor Paul Ananaba, declared that his clients can now begin calling witnesses to testify in support of the petition.

According to the law professor, the witnesses will testify through the documents that have been admitted one at a time to show the court the locations of electoral fraud during the presidential election on February 25.