Court grants Atiku, Obi’s requests to serve Tinubu petition copies through APC
Atiku, Tinubu, Obi
The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja, on Friday, ordered the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, to serve the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, with copies of petitions seeking to nullify his election through substituted means.
The court specifically ordered that the petitions should be served on Tinubu, through his political party, the All Progressives Congress.
The ruling by a three-man panel of the court, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, followed separate motions ex-parte filed by Abubakar and Obi before the court.
The PDP and LP candidates had accused Tinubu of deliberately avoiding being served their petitions. The petitioners told the court that several attempts by them to serve the petitions on the APC candidate proved abortive.
Leader of Atiku and Obi’s legal teams, Eyitayo Jegede (SAN) and Ikechukwu Ezechukwu (SAN) separately moved the applications on Friday.
The lawyers relied on Section 6(6a) and 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution, Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act and Paragraph 8 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022, to seek the court’s intervention.
The aggrieved presidential candidates supported their ex-parte motions, dated March 23, 2023, with affidavits of urgency and non-service.
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