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The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) heard on Wednesday that the name of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) Peter Obi is not contained in the membership register the party submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the February 25 election.
The Senate Majority Leader, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, said this while testifying as the sole witness of President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettma in their defence of the petition by Obi and the LP.
Bamidele also stated that the petitioners wrongly stated the law under which the civil forfeiture proceedings in the United States District Court, involving Tinubu, was conducted to create the impression that it was a criminal forfeiture.
He told the court that Tinubu’s scores in the presidential election in Kano State were downgraded with 10,929 votes while the scores were being transferred from Form EC8D to Form EC8D (A).
Certified true copies of both documents – Forms EC8D and EC8D(A) were tendered in evidence and admitted by the court.
While testifying in the petition by Obi and the LP, lawyer to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) drew Bamidele’s attention to the LP’s membership register for Anambra State, which was already in evidence before the court and asked him to confirm if Obi’s name was on it.
Bamidele looked at the document, which he had also referred to in his written statement which he earlier adopted, and told the court that Obi’s name was not contained on the register, which the LP submitted to INEC with a cover letter dated April 25, 2022.
Tinubu and Shettma had argued, in their response to the petition by Obi and the LP that, not being a member of the party, Obi was not qualified to have contested the last presidential election on the platform of the LP.
In relation to the case in the US, Bamidele said, as a lawyer licensed to practice in the US and a member of the American Bar Association, he was aware that, for there to be a conviction, there must be a charge, an arraignment and a defence entered.
He said the February 3, 2003 letter from the then Inspector General of Police (IGP) Tafa Balogun, requesting for criminal records of Tinubu in the US and the February 4 response by the US Embassy in Nigeria, signed by the Legal Attache, Michael Bonner, effectively cleared Tinubu of any criminal records in the US.
In the US Embassy’s response, which was admitted by the court in evidence, it was stated that all search of the country records did not reveal that Tinubu was ever involved in any criminal case or was ever convicted in the US.
