Hearing continued on Tuesday in the petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate, Barr Chijioke Edeoga against the election of Barr Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), represented by Friday Emmanuel mounted the witness box as a subpoenaed witness to tender the discharge certificate submitted by Governor Peter Mbah, ahead of the elections.

First to mount the witness box was a staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission,

Emmanuel, who is the Petitioner's Witness 3, works at the Legal Drafting and Clearance department at the INEC headquarters, Abuja.

While Edeoga’s counsels were led by V Azinge, SAN, PDP's legal team was led by Wole Olanipekun, SAN. Governor Mbah, on the other hand, was led by Alex Iziyon, SAN, with Humphrey Okoli representing the INEC.

The INEC staff tendered before the Tribunal Barr Peter Mbah”s certificates which he submitted alongside his governorship nomination form.

After tendering his subpoena, Emmanuel then told the Tribunal: “The documents with me are Form EC9 and all the attachments, for the PDP governorship candidate, Enugu State.”

The LP counsel applied to tender the documents as exhibits. Although both the PDP and Mbah’s counsels objected to the admissibility of the documents, they, however, reserved their objections for the written addresses.

The INEC counsel, however, did not object to the tendering of the documents.

Before the INEC staff proceeded to give his evidence, legal fireworks ensued between the petitioners and the respondents. Two of the respondents, Mbah and the PDP objected to his evidence on the grounds that a witness must first swear to a witness deposition on oath, citing several authorities to back up their argument.

But the petitioners’ counsels, led by Azinge equally cited a plethora of cases which they said justified the evidence of the subpoenaed witness.

The Court then held that a ruling on the objections raised by the respondents would be considered alongside the judgement.

Apart from the INEC subpoenaed witness, five others also testified on behalf of the LP in the petition. The witnesses, who said they were all party agents in Udenu Local Government Area during the governorship election, included Ezeme Ifesinachi (PW4) from Obollo-Etiti; Lt. Colonel Ugwu Chizoba, Rtd. (PW5), from Obollo-Etiti; Joseph Ada, (PW6) and Jonas Okwor from the same LGA.

The witnesses are alleging irregularities in the result announced by the INEC for Udenu LGA.

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