Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and candidate for president of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has been granted the three weeks he requested by the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to call 100 witnesses to support his claim that Bola Tinubu of the APC was not the legitimate winner of the presidential election.
In its pre-hearing report on Tuesday, the five-member panel, presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, observed that 166 witnesses in all will be invited to testify.
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It stressed that star witnesses in the petition would only be allowed to adopt their written depositions make oral submissions and identify documents where it is required.
Whereas the court gave the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, two days to present its defence, it gave the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress, APC, five days each to defend the petition.
When reading the pre-hearing report, Justice Stephen Adah further called the parties’ attention to the fact that Atiku’s petition had been combined with those of the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, Mr. Peter Obi, and the Labour Party.
In addition, the court added that the parties will adopt their final briefs of argument to allow it to set a date for judgement. The court ruled that consolidation of the three petitions would secure justice in the matter.
In his joint appeal with the PDP, titled CA/PEPC/05/2023, Atiku requested that INEC revoke the Certificate of Return that had been given to Tinubu of the APC, the party in power.
He maintained that the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the presidential election was “invalid by reason of non- compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022”.
Atiku further argued that Tinubu’s election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices.
He prayed the court to declare him winner of the presidential election, having secured the second highest number of lawful votes cast at the election.
The former Vice President further told the court that Tinubu “has record of criminal forfeiture of the sun of $460, 000. 00 for the drug related offence before the United States Judge, John A Nordberg in the 2nd Respondent’s First Heritage Account No. 263226700, being proceeds of narcotics-trafficking in violation of 18 U. S. C 1956 and 1947 for an offence involving narcotics”.
He insisted that the APC candidate did not meet the constitutional threshold and “is constitutionally disabled from contesting for office of President of Federal Republic of Nigeria”.
However, in a reply he filed through his team of lawyers led by Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, Tinubu, queried the legal competence of the petition.
Tinubu described Atiku as a consistent serial loser that had since 1993, crisscrossed different political parties, in search of power
