The Lamidi Apapa faction of the Labour Party (LP) has alleged that the National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure and Peter Obi could not provide results of polling units at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal because they did not pay party agents.
The faction’s spokesman, Abayomi Arabambi, made this claim in an interview with Punch.
Arabambi alleged that the majority of the agents went away with the result sheets of the polling units when the party failed to pay them their stipend of N10,000 as promised.
He described Obi’s plan to appeal the tribunal’s judgment as a waste of time and resources.
Arabambi said, “Ab initio, no (polling) agent was paid and I remember telling Nigerians it is something that may affect us after the election. None of my agents was paid. Out of the over 190,000 polling units, we only presented to INEC that we have agents in over 130,000. The remaining was not uploaded. Even in the 130,000 we had, no agent submitted his polling unit result to Peter Obi. We owed them N10,000 each.
“These people are not going to tell the world this truth. That was why the judges asked if we expected them to go and gather evidence for us from the market. You went to court without Form EC8 and those lawyers were unable to tabulate the total number of votes that Obi claimed he garnered. Those respected judges were so thorough and nobody should abuse them. They were only asking questions in line with the relevant Electoral Act and Constitution of Nigeria.
“If you were claiming you have the majority of votes counted, what did you score? They couldn’t tabulate or present it in line with the extant law of the land. That was what provoked the judges to even demand Obi’s actual score. Had it been they had the polling unit results, they could have gone ahead with the presentation to prove that LP had certain votes in some states. In this case, we know INEC cannot alter your Form EC8 except theirs. But had it been we paid all our agents, we wouldn’t have this problem.
“We have accepted Wednesday’s verdict at the tribunal and we are going back to the drawing board. Obi’s insistence on going to the Supreme Court despite the avalanche of exposition LP was subjected to at the Court of Appeal is quite unfortunate. He deserves our pity though.
“I believe that going to the Supreme Court is just a sheer waste of time. The apex court is not a court of first instance in the presidential election. The Appeal Court is and his lawyers need to tell him. If they fail to tell him, I am reminding Obi now that no fresh documents will be allowed in the Supreme Court. It is what you have that they are going to debate. No new thing can be introduced.”
He further stated that it would be a waste of time if Obi raised the issue of double nominations by Vice President Kashim Shettima because the case has been settled at the apex court.
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