The Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal, PEPC, in Abuja, will announce its decision on the three petitions seeking to annul the election of President Bola Tinubu.
In preparation for setting the date for the judgment, the five-member panel headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani ordered all parties to appear tomorrow to adopt their final memoranda.
In a notice to the parties, the court urged them to adopt their written submissions with respect to the petition filed against President Tinubu by the former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as well as the petition filed by the candidate of the Labor Party, LP, Peter Obi.
It should be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced on March 1 that Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party had won the February 25 presidential election ahead of 17 other candidates who participated in the contest.
The Commission declared that Tinubu received a total of 8,794,726 votes, beating the two main contenders, Alhaji Atiku of the PDP, who came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the LP, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
However, both Atiku and Obi were unhappy with the election result and went to court to have it annulled. The two claimed in separate petitions that they had won the presidential election while questioning Tinubu's eligibility to stand in the election. Besides asking the court to declare that President Tinubu did not win the majority of legitimate votes cast in the election, the petitioners also want the certificate of return issued to him by INEC to be withdrawn.
Alternatively, they ask the court to order a new presidential election, with the exclusion of President Tinubu, who, according to them, was not eligible to participate in the vote.
Vanguard reported that the 2022 Electoral Act made it mandatory for candidates aggrieved by the election result to within 21 days of the announcement of the result by INEC file a petition to the court, which is expected to deliver its written judgment within 180 days.
On July 5, the tribunal concluded the hearing of Atiku's and Obi's petitions.
While Obi concluded his case after calling 13 witnesses who testified and presented several documentary evidence, Atiku presented 27 witnesses and presented an equal amount of evidence to the tribunal. Both INEC and President Tinubu concluded their defense in both cases with one witness each, while APC did not present any witness before the tribunal.
However, all the respondents, in their respective written submissions, urged the tribunal to dismiss all the petitions for lack of merit. They argued that the petitioners failed to meet the burden of proof imposed on them by the law. According to the respondents, although the petitioners had submitted allegations containing criminal elements, they were unable to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt, as required by law.
Comments