The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPC) is set to deliver its judgment on Wednesday, September 6, News About Nigeria reports.
The verdict borders on the petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, as well as Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP), challenging the victory of Ahmed Bola Tinubu in the February 25 presidential election.
The court had reserved judgment after the petitioners concluded their cases in June, during which they presented 40 witnesses out of the 150 initially listed.
The court also considered petitions from the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) against Tinubu’s election victory and consolidated all three cases.
These petitions are marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, CA/PEPC/04/2023, and CA/PEPC/03/2023. The consolidation was made due to the interconnected nature of the issues raised by the different political parties.
Tinubu was declared the winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC announced that he secured victory by scoring the highest number of votes and meeting the constitutional requirement of obtaining at least one-quarter of the votes in two-thirds of all the states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Tinubu garnered 8,794,726 votes (36.61% of the total), with Atiku Abubakar coming in second with 6,984,520 votes (29.07%), and Peter Obi in third place with 6,101,533 votes (25.40%).
Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes (6.40%), while Princess Chichi Ojei, the sole female presidential candidate, secured only 25,961 votes.
The core issues raised in the petitions by Obi and Atiku include INEC’s alleged failure to carry out electronic transmission of results from the polling units and Tinubu’s purported failure to secure a majority of votes cast in the election, as well as 25 per cent of the votes in the Federal Capital Territory, as required by the constitution.
Additionally, the petitioners have highlighted a controversial double nomination by the then APC’s vice-presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, who was nominated both as vice-president and as the senatorial candidate for Borno Central.
