BREAKING: Tribunal Affirms Buhari President, Dismisses Atiku’s Petition

The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal on Wednesday affirmed the election of Muhammadu Buhari as the duly elected President of Nigeria.

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar had filed a petition asking the tribunal to nullify the presidential election held on February 23 and won by Buhari who was the candidate of the All Progressive Party, APC.

Delivering its judgment today, chairman of the five-panel of justices, Justice Mohammed Lawal Garba said the petitioners have failed to prove that Buhari was not elected through a majority of lawful votes.

Explaining further, the Judge said that the petitioners failed to prove the allegation of electoral malpractices by its inability to produce eye witnesses but instead relied on third party accounts.

“This petition is dismissed in its entirety,” he declared.

The tribunal had earlier ruled that President Buhari was qualified to contest the presidential elections and dismissed claims by the PDP of a central server and electronic transmission of results, saying INEC’s manual does not provide for it.

The tribunal also dismissed parts of the PDP petition alleging that the ruling APC used security officers to manipulate the 2019 election.

The court’s decision followed an application by INEC seeking the nullification of various parts of the petition by the PDP.

Also, the court refused the application by INEC to nullify the documents and witnesses put forward by the PDP on the grounds that the petitioners made wrong spelling of the lead counsel, Levi Uzoukwu’s name in their petition.

All the parties in the suit had made their final submissions on August 21st when the tribunal declared that the date for the judgement would be communicated at a later date.

The petition was filed on March 18, about 177 days ago.

The PDP and Abubakar had closed their case at the tribunal on 19 July after calling 62 witnesses and submitting thousands of documents

According to the provisions of the electoral law, a petition of this nature is to be determined within 180 days after it was filed.

The PDP had challenged the emergence of Buhari as winner of the 2019 presidential election.

According to the petitioners, Abubakar’s investigation of the central server from the Independent National Electoral Commission showed that the PDP polled 18,356,732 votes, instead of the 11,262,978 votes attributed to it by INEC.

The PDP and Abubakar also claimed that they defeated President Buhari who was declared winner with 15,191,847 votes by INEC.

They also claimed that Buhari lied on oath about his educational qualifications and should thus be disqualified.

INEC denied having a server and Buhari’s lawyers said the president was qualified to contest the election.

By the outcome of this judgement, it is likely that Abubakar would go on appeal at the Supreme Court to review the decision.