Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Abubakar Atiku, has filed an appeal before the Supreme Court seeking to nullify the judgement of the election petition tribunal, which upheld the election of Bola Tinubu as President in the February 2023 poll.
Abubakar’s counsel, Chris Uche, on Monday, filed 35 reasons why the tribunal judgement cannot stand.
The five-man tribunal led by Haruna Tsammani had in a judgment delivered on September 6 dismissed petitions by opposition parties and their candidates challenging the election of Tinubu.
The court held that the petitions filed by Abubakar and the PDP, Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) and the Allied Peoples Movement (AMP) were devoid of merit.
In the notice of appeal, Atiku and his party submitted that the tribunal’s findings were done with grave errors and gross misrepresentation which resulted in a miscarriage of justice.
They submitted that the panel erred in law by failing to uphold the “mandatoriness of electronic transmission” of results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The appellants also said the lower court erred in law in its interpretation of section 134(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which addresses scoring of 25 percent of votes in the federal capital territory (FCT).
They also faulted the tribunal for striking out the statements on oaths made by 13 of their witnesses.
Atiku, prayed the apex court to void Tinubu’s election and declare him as the authentic winner of the presidential election.
Atiku who came second in the poll, is claiming that he and not Tinubu actually won majority of the lawful votes cast at the election, alleging that the electoral umpire manipulated the process in favour of Tinubu.
