The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP Atiku Abubakar, has asked the Presidential Election Petition Court to declare him the winner of the February 25 presidential election, having won in 21 states.
He made the request in his final address filed at the PEPC on July 20 in support of his joint petition with the PDP, seeking the nullification of INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the poll.
This was as he stated that President Bola Tinubu who was announced winner by INEC was not qualified to contest the election “having regard to an order of criminal forfeiture against him arising from a drug-related offence, his declaration of allegiance to a country other than Nigeria and acquisition of citizenship of another country and presenting a forged certificate to INEC’.
Atiku also stated that he had proven that the return of Tinubu in the election as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was ‘invalidated by reason of substantial non-compliance with the mandatory provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 on electronic transmission of results for collation and verification by deliberate bypass of and failure to transmit the election results electronically’.
In the final address signed by his lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), Atiku said that INEC’s assertion that he won in 21 states was neither ‘disputed, retracted, debunked nor claimed to be an error through the proceedings of the tribunal so far’.
He added that the fact that a presidential election has never been nullified by the courts in Nigeria before now was not a good reason for the court to hold out on judgement in his favour
