Presidential Election Petition Tribunal And The Futility Of Peter Obi, Atiku’s Case
By Tunde Taiwo Ashaju
Atiku and Peter Obi have both closed their respective cases without proving how they won the election. So, the idea of the court declaring any of them the winner of the election is out of the equation.
The second part of their plea is to get Tinubu disqualified on three grounds. Shettima’s so called double nomination that has now been thrashed by the Supreme Court. 25 per cent of FCT that the two parties seems to have abandoned as they didn’t push this argument seriously. Even if they’ve pushed it, section 299 already made it clear FCT should be treated like a state so it won’t even matter.
The third argument is to get him disqualified by a combination of certificate forgery, dual citizenship and drug conviction.
The certificate forgery is of two nature. Chicago state university and NYSC. As regards Chicago state university, the University already issued a public statement that Bola Tinubu graduated from the University. That alone is enough to settle the matter. All the gymnastic about the color or font of certificate is nonsense.
On NYSC, I would have expected Atiku’s legal team to subpoena NYSC to prove the authenticity of the certificate submitted by Tinubu but they failed to do that. So, how did they arrive at the conclusion that the certificate was forged? NYSC is the only authority that can confirm the authenticity or otherwise of an NYSC certificate.
On the drug conviction issue, it is as empty as the lawyer PDP brought to as witness to prove the case. The witness simply helped PDP to ruin a case that was faulty right from the start. There was no criminal conviction or indictment in the forfeiture. The communication from the US government to the IGP already cleared him of all allegation.
Overall, Atiku and Peter Obi simply wasted everyone’s time. They had no case of rigging so they had to throw in a lot of allegations hoping one will stick. Sadly, they proved none. The two cases will be dismissed with heavy cost to the petitioners.
