The Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, sitting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, has upheld the re-election of Governor Seyi Makinde of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The governorship election held on Saturday, March 18, 2o23, and the result was declared on Sunday March 19, 2023.

Makinde polled a total of 563,617 votes to defeat his closest rival, Senator Teslim of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored 251,230 votes. Chief Adebayo Adelabu of the Accord came a distant third, polling 38,757.

For the third time, the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, was forced to step down hearing in the petition filed by Mr Peter Gregory Obi and the Labour Party, LP, against the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The petition was stepped down by the court following a poor schedule of documents being sought to be tendered to establish the allegations of malpractices during the February 25 presidential election.

At Thursday’s proceedings, the court discovered that the documents were not properly scheduled as ordered by the Court.

In the drama that ensued at the point of rendering the documents from the 23 local government areas of Benue, a lot of discrepancies were uncovered.

All efforts to reconcile the anomaly and reschedule the documents were unsuccessful as the errors were beyond immediate solution.

To save the situation, counsel to Obi and the Labour Party, Chief Emeka Okpoko SAN, sought to use documents not filed to conduct the proceedings, but the move was rejected on the ground of illegality.

In the end, the court stepped down hearing of the petition and ordered the legal team to go and re-file the schedule of documents in line with the provisions of the pre-hearing report.

The hearing of Obi’s petition had run into stormy waters three times, prompting the shift in the hearing of the petition.

At the time of this report, Peter Obi and the Vice Presidential candidate, Datti Baba Ahmed, were in the court as their lawyers were running helter and skelter to the Registry of the Court to file a new schedule of documents.

Meanwhile, the five Justices led by Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani hearing the petition have retired to their chambers to await when the legal team will put its house in order.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has opposed the admittance of documents extracted from the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines as evidence

The PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, through his legal team, on Wednesday, May 31, tendered the duly certified documents by INEC

The Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel admitted documents extracted from the BVAS machines as evidence