The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has postponed the hearing of the petition filed by Peter Obi, a candidate for president of the Labour Party in the election for president held on February 25 till Friday, May 19.
The failure of the parties to reach a document agreement was cited as a basis for the adjournment by Justice Haruna Tsammani, the chairman of the PEPC.
The pre-hearing of the petition filed by Obi and the LP was postponed by the Tribunal last week at the request of the petitioners until Wednesday.
But at the resumed hearing, counsel for the LP, Livy Uzoukwu, informed the court that the scheduled meeting to agree on documents to be tendered for hearing had not yielded fruits as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) only made available 30% of the documents required from them.
Uzoukwu added that the party was yet to get documents with respect to Rivers State where the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the February 25 presidential election had announced that there were no forms EC8A available to be given.
However, counsel for INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, disagreed with the LP counsel, saying the allegations were not true as the party did not show up for the meeting as agreed, and walked out of the rescheduled meeting.
Abubakar added that the documents for Rivers, were provided to the party but it refused to pay the sum of N1.5 million for the Sokoto State, and the Form EC8A for Rivers, which led to the electoral body withholding them.
In his ruling, President of the court, Justice Haruna Tsamani adjourned the pre-hearing to Friday with a warning that all parties must come prepared.
