After three weeks of legal fireworks sparked by the move by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to invalidate the outcome of the 23 February election at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, President Bola Tinubu and his party, the All Progressive Congress , are set to open their defence on Monday.
Five petitions were filed at the court to challenge the election outcome in the wake of the announcement of the results. But the number of petitions dropped to three after two were withdrawn by those who filed them. However, this year’s exercise was distinct owing to the level to which technology was deployed in the conduct of the election. Yet, the final collation and announcement of the presidential election results were delayed for almost a week.
To substantiate his claims, Atiku’s team also presented records of the number of permanent voter cards used for the election across the 36 and printouts of data obtained from the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines- a technology used in the conduct of the election. Two polling unit presiding officers – Friday Egwuma and Grace Timothy – were engaged by INEC to conduct the disputed poll.They recounted their experiences at different polling stations where they presided over the election.
Equally critical at the defence stage of the suits will be Mr Tinubu’s legal team’s capacity to counter allegations of forgery of academic records and impersonation against the president. He tendered Mr Tinubu’s transcripts from the South West College in the US. He added that the transcripts, issued in 1977, identified Mr Tinubu as “female.”In addition, the court admitted a “notarised judgement of criminal forfeiture” of Mr Tinubu’s assets over alleged drug trafficking in the US., Dino Melaye, who is a former senator and PDP candidate in the forthcoming 11 November Kogi State governorship election.
Mr Obi and his party had alleged that INEC’s inability to upload the photographic copies of result sheets from polling stations to the IReV portal in real-time during the election was one of the breaches that marred the polls. Its case involved an alleged double nomination against Mr Shettima as Mr Tinubu’s running mate in the presidential election.As proceedings are due to continue on Monday, the respondents – Mr Tinubu and the APC have a week to prove their case, while INEC has five days to defend its case.