Presidential Poll: Tinubu to open defence June 30 as APM closes case

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will on June 30 open his defence to all the petitions against his election.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on March 1, 2023, declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the February 25 presidential election.

But former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, as well as the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), have filed petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), sitting in Abuja, to challenge the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the Presidential Poll.

Following consolidating the three petitions at the close of the pre-hearing session on May 23, the PEPC allotted three weeks each to Atiku and Obi, to prove their individual petitions.

The three weeks period, which started on May 30, was expected to end on June 20, but following a loss of two days in the hearing of the petitioner’s case, the five-member panel, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, agreed to an extension by two days.

At the resumed session of proceedings on Wednesday, the court said all three petitioners before it would close their case on Friday.

Meanwhile, the APM on Wednesday, closed its case after it presented a star witness before the court.

The witness, Aisha Abubakar, who identified herself as the Assistant Welfare Director of the party, tendered seven batches of documentary evidence before the court to establish their case that Tinubu was not qualified to participate in the 2023 presidential election.

All the respondents in the matter, INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President, Kashim Shettima, the APC, and Ibrahim Masari, did not oppose the admissibility of the documents, which the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel accordingly admitted in evidence and marked as exhibits.

The APM had, in its petition marked, CA/PEPC/04/2023, contended that the withdrawal of Kabiru Masari, who was initially nominated as the vice-presidential candidate of the APC, invalidated Tinubu’s candidacy in view of Section 131(c) and 142 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

The party, through its lawyer, Gideon Idiagbonya, argued that there was a three-week gap between the period that Masari, who joined as the 5th respondent in the petition, expressed his intention to withdraw before withdrawing his nomination and when Tinubu replaced him with Shettima.

It further argued that Tinubu’s candidature had elapsed as of the time he nominated Shettima as Masari’s replacement.

According to the petitioner, as of the time Tinubu announced Shettima as the vice-presidential candidate, he was no longer in a position, constitutionally, to nominate a running mate.

This, according to the APM, implied that Tinubu had ceased to be a presidential candidate of the APC based on the provisions of Section 142 of the 1999 Constitution.

The party prayed the court to declare that Shettima was not qualified to contest as the vice-presidential candidate of the APC as of 25 February, when the election was

The petitioner, therefore, asked the court for an order nullifying and voiding all the votes scored by Tinubu in the presidential election in view of his non-qualification as a candidate of the APC.

It urged the court to declare Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who came second in the election, as the winner of the poll.

Meanwhile, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), lead counsel to President Bola Tinubu, maintained that an appeal the PDP, filed against his client, which the Supreme Court dismissed, bordered on the legality or otherwise of his client’s nomination to contest the election by the APC.

He argued that the apex court’s judgment touched on the substance of APM’s petition.