The Edo State Governorship Petition Tribunal sitting in Benin City on Saturday admitted more documents from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Dr. Asue Ighodalo.
DAILY POST reports that PDP and its candidate, Ighodalo, are challenging the declaration of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and its candidate, Monday Okpebholo as the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The tribunal had on Friday, January 17, 2025 provisionally admitted 1004 documents from the PDP and Ighodalo as exhibits.
During the continuation of the hearing at the weekend, the petitioners tendered more documentary evidence to support the petitions.
The additional documents tendered by Ken Mozia, SAN, counsel to the petitioners are 55 Certified True Copies, CTC, of polling Units Voters registers used in the election and CTC of 56 accreditation figures of extracts from INEC’s Bimodal Voters Accreditation Systems Machines, BVAS.
Also tendered are 72 Certified True Copies of extracts of accreditation figures from the BVAS devices, 75 Certified True Copies of INEC’s Results Viewing (IREV) Containing Form EC8A and 70 CTCs’ of INEC’s Polling Units Booklets, containing Form EC25B.
The petitioners further tendered CTC of 66 copies of polling Units Voters Registers and 125 copies of Form EC8A from IREV directly certified by INEC, 101 copies of Form EC8A, CTC of BVAS of Polling Unit reports as well as certificate of compliance by INEC.
Others are CTC of certificate of compliance, with BVAS machines’ reports in respect of the 133 Polling Units earlier tendered as exhibit in the petitions.
Mozia said, “My Lords, we wish to tender CTC of Copy of serial numbers BVAS machines’ deployed to 133 Polling Units and Certificate of Compliance.”
However, counsel to the respondents, Abdullahi Aliyu, SAN, Offiong Offiong, SAN, and Chief Ferdinand Orbih, SAN, raised objections to the admissibility of the documents.
They however reserved reasons for the objections to the admissibility of the petitioners’ documents to the final written address stage.
While counsel to the 1st Respondent, INEC, Aliyu did not object to the admission of certificate of compliance with BVAS machines used in 133 polling units, counsel to the 2nd and 3rd respondents, Governor Monday Okpebholo and APC, Offiong and Orbih objected and reserved reasons to the final addresses.
DAILY POST reports that PDP and its candidate, Ighodalo, are praying the court to declare them winner of the election, claiming that they scored the highest valid votes cast in the election.