During the sitting of the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja on Tuesday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared that some requested documents by Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, are non-existent. Mr. Obi and the LP have filed a petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023 challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu on February 25. The respondents in the petition include INEC, President Tinubu, Vice-President Kashim Shettima, and their party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Mr. Lawrence Bayode, the Deputy Director of ICT at INEC, testified before the court, revealing that out of the five documents requested by Obi, two do not exist and one is still in progress. One of Obi’s witnesses, Ms. Loretta Ogah, an ICT cloud engineer and former contestant for the House of Representatives under the Labour Party in Cross River, testified that she lost the election. She took the stand for cross-examination by Mr. Wole Olanipakun (SAN), the counsel for Tinubu and Shettima.
Ogah informed the court that she filed a lawsuit against INEC due to the omission of her name on the electoral portal, which she attributed to network failure. However, during cross-examination by Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the counsel for the APC, Ogah stated that no glitches occurred on the INEC portal on February 25. She also admitted that she was not familiar with INEC’s password protocol since she was not an employee of the commission.
The court, presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, adjourned further hearings to Wednesday, as reported by NAN.