A chieftain of the Labour Party in Abia State and the witness for Governor Alex Otti and the LP, Acho Obioma, on Wednesday, August 16, 2023, said the primary election held by the party in the state was nullity.
The LP chieftain said this under cross-examination at the Abia State Election Petition Tribunal in the case brought by the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate, Ikechi Emenike, challenging the declaration of Otti of Labour Party as the winner of the 2023 governorship election in the state.
Obioma, who was the Director General of Abia State Labour Party Campaign Organisation, testified as the second witness on the schedule of witnesses of Otti who is the 3rd respondent in the matter, and agreed before the court that the document he tendered as evidence covering the purported primary election has no value in law.
He tendered before the tribunal a copy of a letter which he said was Labour Party membership waiver issued to Otti, a copy of a letter written by the governor notifying the APC of his resignation, and a report authored by one Obinna of Abia State INEC, Umuahia, claiming to have monitored a primary election purportedly conducted by the Abia State Labour Party.
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However, while being cross-examined, the witness admitted that the document which was supposed to be the report of the purported LP primary election in Abia State had neither a date nor a signature thereby rendering it useless before the law and the purported primary election a nullity.
In an earlier submission by a witness subpoenaed by the court and detailed by INEC headquarters in Abuja to witness for it in the matter brought against Otti’s declaration as winner of the March 18, 2023, governorship election in Abia State by PDP’s Okey Ahiwe, Barr Hadizat Abubakar of the electoral body’s Election Party and Monitoring Department, had tendered certified true copies from the national headquarters of INEC, confirming that Abia State Labour Party did not submit its membership register and that INEC did not monitor its governorship primary election as required by law.
She also affirmed that any document presented to the tribunal from INEC in evidence must be authenticated and certified by the institution’s headquarters in Abuja and not by staff of its state offices.
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