The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal Abuja will pre-hear petitions challenging the February 25 election results today.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared that Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) after polling 8,794,726 votes to defeat his contenders.
The commission declared that Atiku came second with 6,984,520 votes, while it announced Labour Party’s Peter Obi as the second runner-up with 6,101,533 votes.
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Subsequently, Atiku, Obi and some other parties rejected the results and filed petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to void INEC’s declaration.
A senior lawyer in Tinubu’s camp, who asked not to be named, told Punch that “he only thing they will do is to schedule the hearing, the number of witnesses, how many minutes the witness will use, and how to admit the documents; that’s what they call pre-trial.”
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“They are going to prepare a timetable for the hearing of the cases, the number of days to be spent by the petitioners, the number of days to be spent by the respondents, how do we take in the documents, certified true copy of the documents, are they going to be admitted like that or if there is an objection, how do we raise an objection to document?
“Will the court write a ruling on objection immediately or will the court write it in the cause of the main judgment? Those are the things that will happen tomorrow (Monday),” he added.
Atiku, in his 66-page petition, is praying the tribunal to declare him winner of the poll or order a fresh election. At the same time, Obi is begging the tribunal to do the same in his favour.
