Nigerians await Tribunal’s judgment Wednesday

Nigerians home and abroad are anxiously waiting for the outcome of the petitions filed by the Labour Party presidential candidates, Peter Obi and the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

All is now set as the presidential election petitions tribunal will, on Wednesday deliver its verdict.

The Court of Appeal Registrar, Umar Bangari confirmed this on Monday, saying the proceedings would be open to live broadcast by interested television stations.

Tinubu secured 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who got 6,984,520, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who polled 6,101,533 votes.

While Obi said he was “robbed” of victory and vowed to “prove it to Nigerians”, Atiku described the outcome as “a rape of democracy”.

The Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the court had on August 1, okayed the cases for judgment after all the parties adopted their final briefs of argument.

Adopting their final written address, Atiku and the PDP, through their team of lawyers led by Chief Chris Uche, SAN, urged the court to declare that President Tinubu was not qualified to contest the presidential poll that was held on February 25.

They prayed the presidential election tribunal to nullify the entire outcome of the presidential election and order a re-run or fresh contest.

Obi and the LP, through their lawyer, Mr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, argued that there was no glitch during the election but an intentional act to sabotage the outcome of the poll.

Uzoukwu, SAN, while calling for the removal of President Tinubu, insisted that “an election where over 18, 088 blurred results were uploaded to INEC’s IReV portal, is certainly a flawed election.”

He told the court that some of the documents that INEC certified for his clients, included blank copies of A4 papers and pictures.

“That explains their inability to produce original copies of results that they certified,” he added.