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- Hearing adjourn to Friday
From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has adjourned till Friday, May 19, the pre-hearing of the petition by the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, against the President-elect, Bola Tinubu after dramatic proceedings.
Meanwhile, the factional chairman of the party, Lamidi Apapa has been taken into protective custody by security operatives after being mobed by angry youths shortly after the adjournment.
Before the incident, Apapa had a clash in the courtroom with the director general of Peter Obi’s presidential campaign, Akin Osuntokun over seats.
Apapa approached Osuntokun who was already seated in the gallery with other party chieftains to vacate their seats for him.
He said as the bonafide national chairman of the party, he deserved to be seated in the plaintiff’s gallery and to sit close to Obi, who was already seated in court.
But Osuntokun vehemently refused to yield his seat asserting that Apapa had no such right to take his seat.
It took the quick intervention of the Secretary of the Presidential election petition court, Josephine Ekperobe before normalcy was restored.
Apapa was later allowed to sit by the other side of the public gallery.
The factional chairman is presently engaged in a legal battle with executives of the party and had at some point directed lawyers representing Obi to report to him for briefing.
Meanwhile, when the petition was called the tribunal declined to accept Limidi Apapa or any other person as representative of the Labour Party in the party’s petition against the election of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
Obi and his Labour Party had dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu, his Vice President-elect, Senator Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress to the presidential court over the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
Although the court had since last week accepted the announcement of one Obiora Ifoh, the National Publicity Secretary of the LP, as representative of the party, it however refused to accept any representative at Wednesday’s proceedings owing to Apapa and the National Women Leader of the LP, Mrs Dudu Manuga claiming to be representing the LP.
When the matter was called, Obi represented himself as the 1st petitioner and handed over the microphone to Manuga, but before the court could record the name of Manuga, Apapa stood up to introduce himself as National Chairman of the party and representative of the Labour Party.
Responding, Justice Tsammani who observed that “there is a little disagreement about who is representing the Labour Party”, held that, “we are not recognising anybody as representative of the party “.
The court subsequently went ahead to take the appearances of other parties in the petition.
But outside the courtroom, trouble started with the factional chairman when he made an attempt to address the media just after the lead counsel to Obi and the party, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, had addressed journalists on what transpired in court.
Just when he presented himself and was about to speak, some aggrieved youths simply identified as “Obidients’ descended on him and dragged him away from the cameras saying he has no right to speak for the party.
He was only pulled away from the angry mob by security operatives attached to the court after his ” “agbada” cloth was torn and his cap equally snatched from his head.
Meanwhile, the tribunal has adjourned till Friday following the failure of parties in the petition to agree on documents among other reasons.
