OSBC Osun State Broadcasting Corporation
A total of 180 witnesses have been lined up to testify in the petition filed by former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar against the outcome of the presidential election that was held on February 25, 2023.
While Atiku has lined up 100 witnesses to prove his case, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has two witnesses while the president-elect, Bola Tinubu and his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has 39 witnesses each to defend their victory.
In all of these, Atiku told the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) that he needs only three weeks to call his witnesses to prove that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was wrongly returned by INEC as winner of the disputed election.
In their joint petition marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, Atiku and PDP are urging the court to among other reliefs, withdraw the Certificate of Return that was issued to the President-elect by INEC.
The petitioners maintained that the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election was “invalid by reason of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022”.
They further argued that Tinubu’s election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices, insisting that he was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast at the election.
