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Labour Party to call 50 witnesses in petition challenging Tinubu’s election

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The Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, will call at least 50 witnesses to testify in their petition challenging the election of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the presidential election petition tribunal.

The counsel to the petitioners, Prof. Awa Kalu (SAN), stated this at the resumed proceedings of the pre-hearing phase on Saturday in Abuja.

He said: “We still have a few hiccups at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) because of the order of this court made on March 8, directing the commission to allow us to carry out a forensic investigation of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which we have not been able to do.”

Kalu, therefore, said his clients would require seven weeks within which to present their petition in court.

He also suggested 30 minutes be allotted to the witnesses classified as “star witnesses” to demonstrate any electronic evidence.

He, however, said the 30 minutes excluded the time that would be used to demonstrate video evidence or any other electronic evidence.

The counsel said: “For this class of witnesses, each will be cross-examined for 30 minutes by each respondent and re-examination will be for five minutes.

READ ALSO: PDP denies withdrawal of petition challenging Tinubu’s election victory

“In respect of other witnesses, we suggest 10 minutes for evidence-in-chief, 10 minutes for cross-examination by each respondent and five minutes for re-examination.

“For the respondents, we suggest 20 minutes for the evidence-in-chief of their star witnesses, 30 minutes for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination.

“For their other witnesses, we suggest 20 minutes for evidence-in-chief, 15 minutes for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination.

Counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), said his client planned to call five witnesses to defend the election of Tinubu.

Mahmoud told the court that his team would require seven days to argue the case of their client.

He said that the commission was proposing 30 minutes for its star witness to give the evidence-in-chief, 15 minutes for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination.

“For the regular witnesses, we propose 10 minutes for evidence-in-chief, 15 minutes for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination,” Mahmoud stated.

He opposed the suggestion by the petitioners that a separate time be given to their expert witnesses for demonstration.

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