The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party and their candidates – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi respectively – along with the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) had filed petitions challenging the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC).
The Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja has uploaded a certified true copy of the tribunal’s judgment on the petitions against President Bola Tinubu’s election on the website of the Court of Appeal.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party and their candidates – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi respectively – along with the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) had filed petitions challenging the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC).
But the court in its judgement on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 dismissed the petitions, describing them as unmeritorious.
Meanwhile, the PDP, Labour Party and their presidential candidates have since rejected the judgement of the tribunal, vowing to appeal at the Supreme Court.
SaharaReporters observed that the PEPC had uploaded a certified true copy of its judgement on the website of the Court of Appeal.
The 798-page document was signed by the presiding Judge, Justice Haruna Tsamani and the other justices on the five-member panel, namely Stephen Adah, Mistura Bolaji-Yusuf, Biolokumo Ugo, and Justice Aba Mohammed.
Meanwhile, Atiku’s legal had written to the PEPC demanding the document.
Chris Uche (SAN), the lead counsel for Atiku, in the letter addressed to the secretary of the court, asked the PEPC to release the documents without delay.
The PEPC subsequently released the certified true copy of the judgment.
Thereafter, some members of the PDP and LP condemned some copies of the judgement in circulation which had watermarks of Tinubu’s legal team on them.
For instance, Phrank Shaibu, an aide to former Vice-President Atiku, on Saturday, asked the PEPC to explain why “’Tinubu Presidential Legal Team’ is marked on the certified true copy of the judgement”.
According to Shaibu, the “inscription on the CTC” suggests that the tribunal accorded special privileges to Tinubu’s legal team.
“Nigerians want to know why the PEPC confers special privileges to the Tinubu Legal Team by making them have a first custody of copies of the PEPC judgement, even though it was more urgent for the petitioners who needed the document in order to cause an appeal to the Supreme Court within 14 days including weekends.
“In the course of delivering its judgement, the PEPC had spoken of the petition it was ruling upon in a vexatious and denigrating language as if it was a crime to bring a case of electoral banditry before the court.”
According to him, the inscription at the top left-hand corner of the document is neither monochrome nor metadata.
However, Tinubu Presidential Legal Team, in a statement it made available through its coordinator, Babatunde Ogala, SAN, dismissed the allegation.
Ogala explained that lawyers representing the PDP and Atiku were present when Tinubu’s legal team received a copy of the PEPC judgment.
He said it was after receiving the judgement that Tinubu’s legal team watermarked its copy before circulating it to its members.
He said, “Following some mischievous insinuations being made in certain quarters regarding the innocuous water-mark of copies of the consolidated judgment of the Court of Appeal with the inscription -‘Tinubu Presidential Legal Team ‘TPLT’, it has become necessary to offer this clarification.
“After the delivery of judgment in the 3 (Three) election petitions by the Court of Appeal on September 6, 2023, the Court directed its registry to make physical copies of same available on September 7, 2023.
“Accordingly, the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team applied for a certified true copy of the said judgment and paid the prescribed fee.
“Lawyers for PDP were present at the registry at the same time to collect the same judgment.”
Also, a source privy to the matter confirmed to SaharaReporters on Sunday that the PDP and LP chieftains and lawyers know the truth but only chose to play politics with the issue to make the PEPC judgment appear dubious.
Both the PDP and LP know the truth but were just playing games regarding the situation of CTC to try to discredit the judgment in the eyes of the public,” the source said.