The Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja has ruled that Nigeria’s ‘President-elect’, Bola Tinubu, is served with copies of petitions seeking to nullify his election through different means. The court ordered on Friday that Applicants serve Tinubu should through his political party, APC, after unsuccessful attempts to serve him directly.
Atiku Abubakar, the PDP’s candidate, and Peter Obi of Labour Party, separately filed ex-parte applications before the court. The petitioners argued that Tinubu’s actions are to frustrate their efforts to give him copies of the petitions as required by law.
The petitioners cited Sections 6(6a) and 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act, and Paragraph 8 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022, seeking the court’s intervention.
The court granted Atiku, Obi and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) applications also to serve their petitions on Tinubu via substituted means. The court also ordered that the Applicants serve the petitions within seven days.
Atiku and Obi have accused Tinubu of rigging the election in his favour. INEC declared Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner with 8,794,726 votes. While Atiku came second with 6,984,520 votes, and Obi third with 6,101,533 votes.
