The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal has made significant rulings regarding certain aspects of the petitions submitted by the People’s Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for the February polls.
One of the key decisions is the striking out of portions of the petition in which the PDP claimed that Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, was not qualified to contest the last presidential election. The Tribunal found that while the petitioners argued that Tinubu did not meet the constitutional qualifications necessary for running in the election, they failed to specify the required qualifications.
Additionally, the Tribunal removed paragraphs from the petition that accused Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State and Friday Adejo, described as a Local Government Chairman in Kogi State, but did not include them as parties to the petition.
Furthermore, the Tribunal struck out other paragraphs where it found that the petitioners had made vague allegations of irregularities and malpractices.
Justice Stephen Adah, in announcing these decisions, stated, “The witness statements being incompetent are hereby struck out, and as a result, this court. The further consequence of that decision is that, given the provision of paragraph 41 sub three of the same first schedule to the electoral act 2022, stating that there shall be no oral examination of a witness during his evidence in chief except to lead the witness to adopt his written deposition and tender in evidence or disputed documents or other exhibits referred to in this deposition. It follows that all the evidence, including evidence in cross-examination and all documents, reports, are incompetent and are hereby expunged from the records of this court.”