Tribunal Allows Three Weeks For Atiku To Present 100 Witnesses Against Tinubu

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has granted the former Vice President and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the three weeks that he demanded to assembly his 100 witness to prove his case that Tinubu of the APC was not the valid winner of the presidential election.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel, in its pre-hearing report.

He noted that a total of 166 witnesses would be called to testify in the matter, stressing that star witnesses in the petition would only be allowed to adopt their written depositions make oral submissions and identify documents where it is necessary.

The Tribunal, however, gave the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, two days to present its defence, while it gave the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress, APC, five days each to defend their petitions.

Justice Stephen Adah, read the pre-hearing report, and equally drew the attention of the parties to the fact that Atiku’s petition had been merged with the one that was filed by candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi and the one that was filed by the Allied Peoples Movement, APM.

The Tribunal affirmed that merging the three petitions would ensure justice in the matter, expressing that the parties would adopt their final briefs of argument to enable it to fix a date for judgement.

Atiku had in his joint petition with the PDP, marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, applied for the withdrawal of the Certificate of Return that was issued to Tinubu of the ruling APC, by INEC.

Atiku observed 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”.

He further reasoned that Tinubu’s election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices.