PEPC Cites Atiku’s Lawyer’s Comment In A Book While Delivering Judgment In Tinubu’s Favour
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party has lost his petition to invalidate the success of Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the presidential election held on February 25.
The tribunal at the Presidential Election Petition Court delivered its judgment in the court today, holding that the PDP candidate failed to plead the facts of his case beyond reasonable doubt.
In delivering the judgment against Abubakar, the court placed some reliance on a law book detailing the significance of frontloading witness statements in election petitions. The foreword of the said book was written by Chris Uche, Abubakar’s lawyer.
Reading the judgment in a televised proceeding on Wednesday, the court stated the petition by Atiku and his party was nebulous as it was grounded largely in generic claims.
According to the court, the petitioners failed to identify the exact polling units they claimed electoral irregularities were perpetrated.
On the issue of the alleged prosecution of Tinubu for a drug trafficking case in the United States, the court ruled that the referenced case was irrelevant to the petition.
The court went on to state that the petitioner introduced claims not originally contained in their petition, holding that such issues were incompetent and liable to be expunged from the case.
The petitioners also did not prove their allegation of corrupt practices said to have happened during the voting, according to the court.
On non-compliance with the electoral law, the court maintained that the burden of proof lies on the petitioners and must succeed per their pleadings. In this case, the court resolved that the petitioners failed in their position to prove how substantial the irregularities were and whether it was capable of shifting the outcome of the contest.
