The Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Cross River will on Tuesday deliver judgment on the petition filed by Prof. Sandy Onor of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against the victory of Sen. Bassey Otu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
This is according to a statement by the Secretary of the tribunal, Mr Akawu Bambu, in Calabar on Sunday.
The suit, Suit No. EPT/CR/GOV/02/2023, was jointly instituted by Onor and the PDP.
The Counsel to Onor and Otu, Mr J.Y. Musa, SAN and Prof. Mike Ozekhone, SAN, respectively, presented their written addresses and were adopted by the three-man tribunal.
In his final written address, Musa told the court that evidence extracted under cross-examination of the respondents goes to fortify the case of their petition and also confirms the falsity of the evidence presented by the second and third respondents (Governor Otu and Peter Odey).
Onor closed his case after calling some witnesses, while Otu called 10 witnesses.
The tribunal led by Justice Oken Inneh had reserved judgment following the adoption of written addresses by both parties on August 13.
Musa said the case of the petitioners is not allegations of forgery against any of the respondents (Otu and Odey), and so all the authorities they cited to the effect that they needed to call witnesses from institutions are non-sequitor, rather their case is that the second and third respondents lied on oath.
He insisted that the second and third respondents (Otu and Odey) brought documents to show that they forged documents.
Recall that INEC declared Otu as the winner of the election after polling 258,619 votes to defeat the PDP candidate, who scored 179,636 votes.
