Palpable tension as Presidential Election Tribunal hears Obi, Atiku’s petitions today
Today, Monday, May 8, the Presidential Election Tribunal will start hearing the cases brought before it by disgruntled opposition parties challenging the election of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu.
Remember that several of the losing candidates in the February 25 presidential election went to court to seek redress after Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was declared the winner, claiming that the election had been rigged in the ruling party’s favor.
According to INFOXCLUSIVE, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Pete Obi of the Labour Party, and others had petitioned the tribunal to overturn Tinubu’s victory on the grounds that the election had been conducted substantially outside of the bounds of the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and INEC’s rules for conducting elections.
Former vice president Atiku is pleading with the court to allow a new election to be held because there were allegedly irregularities at voting locations during the presidential election. He based his motion on five reasons.
According to Atiku and his party, Tinubu was declared the winner of the election before INEC had transferred and uploaded all of the results and accreditation information from the voting places.
Former Anambra governor Obi claims there were other irregularities in the electoral process and maintains that Tinubu and Senator Kashim Shettima were not eligible to run.
Obi added that Tinubu was unable to gain the majority of legitimate votes and one-quarter of the vote in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
According to INFOXCLUSIVE, the Court is anticipated to offer a complete schedule for hearing the substantive petitions brought against the President-elect at the electoral tribunal during today’s pre-hearing session.
Festus Keyamo, the minister of state for labor and employment, said that foreign lawyers had been brought in from abroad to thwart Tinubu’s May 29 inauguration.
Additionally, Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, allegedly hired foreign lawyers to represent Peter Obi, according to a tweet by Femi Fani-Kayode, a senior member of the ruling party.
In a jeering tweet, the former Aviation Minister captioned a video, “when Peter heard that the Russian lawyer that OBJ had procured for him to represent him at the Election Petition Tribunal was no longer coming. Poor, tired soul! Pls pray for him.”
Members of Obi’s legal team are all Nigerians, according to Dr. Yunusa Salisu Tanko, chief spokesperson for the LP presidential campaign committee in the already-completed election, who said as much on Sunday.
He said, “As far as I know, the lawyers are all Nigerians, I have not seen any foreign lawyer in the legal team.”
He was optimistic about how the process would turn out and insisted that the party’s nominee would deliver speeches that could not be criticized.
“From what we are presenting to the court, we are very optimistic that they cannot find fault in our presentation,” he added.
(INFOXCLUSIVE)
