Election Petition: Peter Obi didn’t ask court for 7 weeks to present witnesses — LP

Labour Party (LP) has denied viral reports that it asked the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to give it seven weeks to produce witnesses.

According to the Head, Obi-Datti Media, Diran Onifade in a statement on Sunday, “Peter Obi did not ask the court to give him seven weeks to bring in his witnesses. He only implied he will be through with all 50 of them in seven weeks.”

A newspaper (not NewsWireNGR) had reported “Give me seven weeks to produce witnesses, Obi tells Tribunal”.

Onifade claimed the report “is a misrepresentation of what our Counsel presented yesterday, before the Election Petition Tribunal.”

The statement reads in part; “In proposing his schedule of witnesses, Eme Awa Kalu, SAN leading the team in court, had told the court that Peter Obi and Labour Party would be presenting 50 witnesses and that these 50 witnesses, will require 7 weeks to present their evidence before the Tribunal.

“At no time did the Counsel say that he required ‘Seven weeks to produce witnesses’ as misreported by the Punch.

“The correct interpretation of what our lawyers told the court unambiguously is that the presentation of our witnesses, from start to finish, will take seven weeks.

“We are not asking the court to wait for seven weeks before we bring in the first witness as the Punch story tries to imply.

“It is expected that every media house will assign competent reporters to cover this important case.

“We expect the Punch Newspaper to immediately correct this misrepresentation with the same front page headline with which it was presented to the public.”