6th September, 2023
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has dismissed the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and his party, the PDP against the election of President Bola Tinubu.
The Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel said the petitions filed by Atiku and PDP lacked merit.
“Having found all three petitions to be unmeritorious, I hold that the return of Tinubu as elected President by INEC is right.”
The four issues raised in Atiku’s petition had to do with non compliance with the electoral act, and also questioned whether Bola Tinubu scored the majority of lawful votes cast to be declared winner
Atiku also claimed that Tinubu was not qualified to contest the election having been linked to a fine of narcotics forfeiture in the US.
Also, the tribunal rejected and discountenanced exhibits including witnesses’ statements tendered by Abubakar to substantiate his allegations of electoral irregularities and malpractices at the last presidential election.
The court also expunged 37 exhibits tendered by the witnesses from the court’s records.
On the issue of Tinubu’s conviction and the issue of his dual citizenship, the Tribunal again held like it earlier did that this issues were incompetent and liable to be struck out and same were indeed struck out.