Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, has told the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal that he will prove his victory in the election with 100 witnesses.
This is coming as litigants before the Tribunal have agreed to streamline the processes in order to meet up with the time assigned to the Tribunal to conclude its work.
Atiku’s Counsel, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), who disclosed this Saturday, also said that all the parties have met and agreed on the number of witnesses to call, the duration of examination and cross-examination of witnesses.
According to him, Atiku and PDP intend to call not more than 100 witnesses.
Chief Uche added that though the new time given them to call these was seven weeks, his team will need only three weeks to conclude as issues in the matter have been streamlined.
“All the parties agreed to streamline the number of witnesses and the duration of each party to call witnesses.
For the evidence in chief, they categorised them into 30 minutes for the lead witness because they will tender and identify documents. They also proposed 15 minutes for each respondent for cross-examination and five minutes for re-examination of the lead witness of the petitioners.
“There will be minutes proposed for other witnesses of the petitioners. Ten minutes for cross-examination of these witnesses by the respondents.
“For the Star witnesses of the respondents (INEC, Tinubu and the APC), 30 minutes was proposed.
“30 minutes was also proposed for the cross-examination of the respondents witnessed by the respondents.
“INEC says it has two witnesses that will testify, while the Counsel to the President-Elect said he has 39 witnesses ready.
“The report of any star witness should be made available 48 hours before a hearing while the schedule of documents to be filed must be given to other parties before the hearing and calling of witnesses.
“Examination of experts and star witnesses will take 20 minutes while cross-examination by respondents is allotted 30 minutes.
“Re-examination will take five minutes, and examination of non-experts/star witnesses will take 10 minutes while cross-examination will last for 15 mins and final
re-examination is allotted five minutes”.
