THE Presidential Election Petitions Court dismissed the suit of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, alleging that All Progressives Congress (APC) President Bola Tinubu had dual citizenship.
After reviewing the evidence and papers presented, Justice Stephen Adah, who took over from Justice Haruna Tsammani, ruled out the evidence of some of Atiku’s witnesses on the grounds that their witness statements on oath were not filed with his petition.
The court further ordered that 37 exhibits presented by the witnesses be removed from the court’s records.
On the issue of dumping documents on the court, he stated that this would just add to the weight of such evidence.
On the matter of Tinubu’s conviction and dual citizenship, the Tribunal decided, as it had before, that these issues were incompetent and liable to be dismissed, and they were.
Following that, Justice Adah handed over to Justice Tsammani, the panel’s leader, who then dealt with the main petition.
The court specified four grounds for decision.
Concerning the election officials’ incapacity to transmit, ten of the 27 witnesses brought by the petitioner were polling unit agents who testified about how the polls were conducted in their respective polling units.
All ten witnesses testified that voting went smoothly and peacefully in their respective polling units, but that they were unable to upload results electronically to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) portal, so they entered the results manually and took them to the ward or state collation center.
The witnesses were unequivocal that voting proceeded smoothly, that party agents signed the results, and that the only difficulty was in electronically uploading the results.
The Tribunal strongly stressed that litigation is fought on pleadings, parties swim or sink on their pleadings.
On the allegations that agents of the respondents disrupted the elections, the petitioners said video recordings will be tendered as proof but this was not done.
From the foregoing, the petitioners failed to prove the issue of election malpractice and the issue was resolved in favour of the respondents and against the petitioners.
Issue two is on the 25 percent in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and the court simply adopted its earlier decision on the issue.
Issue three is on the qualification of the Tinubu because of the alleged indictment but the petitioners did not place believable evidence before the court.
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