The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal Abuja will today starts hearing the petitions challenging the results of the February 25 presidential election.
Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress was declared winner after he was said to have polled 8,794,726 votes to win the election, by the Independent National Electoral Commission
Atiku Abubakar of the People Democratic Party was declared second with 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi of Labour Party as the second runner-up with 6,101,533 votes.
Atiku, Obi and some other parties have rejected the results announced by INEC and had approached the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to annul Tinubu’s victory.
According to The Punch, a senior lawyer in Tinubu’s camp, who asked not to be named, told one of our correspondents on Sunday that, “The only thing they will do is to schedule the hearing, the number of witnesses, how many minutes the witness will use, and how to admit the documents; that’s what they call pre-trial.
“They are going to prepare a timetable for the hearing of the cases, the number of days to be spent by the petitioners, the number of days to be spent by the respondents, how do we take in the documents, certified true copy of the documents, are they going to be admitted like that or if there is an objection, how do we raise an objection to document?
On what to expect at today’s proceedings,
Meanwhile, the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has raised the alarm over reports and allegations of plots by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to influence the outcome the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, ahead of the commencement of its proceedings today.
The APC has however countered the opposition party describing the allegation as cheap blackmail.
The opposition party also charged the justices of the presidential election tribunal to rise above the board and resist any intimidation from any quarter.
But the Minister of State for Labour, Employment and Productivity, Festus Keyamo, has described the allegation as reverse psychology and cheap blackmail.
Addressing the press at the party’s national secretariat, National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Debo Ologunagba, said the alleged planned onslaught by APC leaders on eminent Nigerians and democratic institutions, including the Judiciary, stemmed from APC’s apprehensions given the weight of evidence against it as well as the continuing refusal by majority of Nigerians to accept the outcome of the flawed Presidential election.
“There are apprehensions in the public space, having regards to the reputation of certain individuals within the highest level of the APC, who have demonstrated capacity and proclivity to compromise democratic institutions in our country.
“It would be recalled that on Friday, May 5, 2023, our party raised the alarm over the massively condemned comments by the APC Presidential Candidate, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at the commissioning of some judiciary projects in Port Harcourt Rivers State, wherein he attempted to corrupt, cultivate and patronise the Judiciary.
“More alarming are allegations in the public space of attempts by certain APC leaders to compromise the judiciary with heavy financial inducement and to orchestrate trumped-up allegations of impropriety against judicial officers,” he stated.
The PDP, therefore, called on the APC and its leaders to immediately come clean and publicly address Nigerians and the world on the allegations and revelations, which were already in the public domain.
“For emphasis, majority of Nigerians are insisting on the review of the February 25, 2023 presidential election, because it was marred by wide-spread manipulations, open alteration of genuine election results from the Polling Units, allocation of fictitious figures to the APC and brazen violation of the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), the Electoral Act, 2022 as well as INEC Manual and Guidelines by INEC itself in its declaration of a winner of the election.
”The bizarre response by INEC, which is an umpire that ought to be independent, to the petition of the PDP and our candidate, Atiku Abubakar, requesting for the dismissal of our Petition, is further evidence of the complicity, corruption and compromise of INEC by the APC.
“It is instructive for INEC and the APC to note that the tribunal hearing is part of the electoral process. The APC and INEC are therefore advised to halt further steps to hinder the ability of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to dispense justice in the matter in accordance with the law,” he said.
The party restated its call on the judiciary to resist and insulate itself from the alleged and reported antics of the APC in the discharge of its constitutional duties as independent and impartial arbiter in the pending petition before the tribunal.
Minister of State for Labour, Employment and Productivity, Festus Keyamo, has described the PDP allegation as reverse psychology and cheap blackmail.
Keyamo, in a statement, described the allegation as a contempt of court, saying the APC was within its rights to correct the wrong impressions about the elections being created before Nigerians and the international community.
Keyamo, who was the spokesperson of the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) of APC in the 2023 elections, noted that the press conference held yesterday was an attempt by the PDP to play to the gallery.
The APC Chieftain stressed that instead of going to the court on Monday to begin to prove its case, the PDP has resorted to cheap and emotional blackmail.
“The allegations are infantile, lacking in substance and devoid of proof. Nigerians should dismiss them with a wave of the hand, please. PDP and its sister company, the Labour Party (LP) have been the ones sponsoring surrogates to ‘speak out’ against the outcome of the largely free and fair 2023 Presidential elections, when their cases are still pending in Court.
“That is contempt of court and we are within our rights to correct the wrong impressions about the elections being created before Nigerians and the international community. How they see that as ‘attack’ is comical
“In fact, these Siamese twins of PDP and LP (we all saw (Peter) Obi genuflecting before his boss, Atiku (Abubakar), yesterday (Saturday) in Yenagoa) are the ones issuing veiled threats to our judiciary and judicial officers, either by themselves or through their surrogates, be they in religious circles or in civil society or the labour unions. So, by pretentiously raising this so-called alarm, they are playing a game of ‘reverse psychology’,” he said.
Keyamo said in all the states, where the PDP won and the LP also won, including the senate, governorship and the others, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has filed their responses in court defending those declarations of the winners as correct.
He stressed that to the uninformed, they should be alerted that it was the legal duty of INEC to stand by its declarations in court, adding that what the commission was doing in the case of APC in the Presidential Election Petition was not strange.
Keyamo challenged, however, the PDP and the LP to query INEC for defending them in those states, where they also won.