Tribunal Adjourns Atiku’s Petition Against Tinubu Till Friday

The Presidential Election case Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, has adjourned further hearings on the case PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar filed to protest the results of the presidential election that took place on February 25 until Friday.

The five-member panel, presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, adjourned in order to hear more pre-hearing testimony on the petition and the respondents’ outstanding petitions.

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The All Progressives Congress, APC, the President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, are named as respondents in the case.

The respondents are requesting that the matter be completely dismissed or, in the alternative, that many of the petition’s paragraphs be struck out due to incompetence.

While adjourning the matter, Justice Tsammani said the court would on Friday, decide on the number of witnesses that would be allowed for each of the parties, time to be allocated to them, as well as the time to be allowed for cross examination.

He urged the parties to put heads together and agree on further modalities to be adopted.

It will be recalled that Atiku and the PDP are in their joint petition marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, praying the court to among other things, withdraw the Certificate of Return that was issued to the President-elect by INEC.

The petitioners argued that Tinubu’s announcement as the election’s victor was unlawful because it “failed to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022.”

They further asserted that Tinubu was not legitimately elected by the majority of valid votes cast in the election, claiming that his election was illegal due to fraudulent practices.

Having received the second-highest number of valid votes cast in the election, Atiku further asked the court to proclaim him the victor of the presidential race.