Abuja – Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, and Peter Obi, his Labour Party counterpart, have accused Bola Tinubu, the President-elect, of evading their petitions seeking to nullify his election.
Atiku and Obi have filed ex-parte applications at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja, asking to serve the petitions on Tinubu through substituted means.
Tinubu, who was declared the winner of the presidential election on March 1, is presently out of the country.
The petitioners lamented that all their efforts to effect personal service of their petitions on him have proved abortive.
The court has indicated that it will hear Atiku and Obi’s applications by 11am today, owing to an affidavit of urgency that accompanied the motion ex-parte.
It is recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu, who ran on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.
According to INEC, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Atiku and Obi rejected the outcome of the election, which they insisted was rigged in Tinubu’s favour.
They also accused INEC of acting in breach of its own electoral regulations and guidelines.
The petitioners argued that Tinubu was not legally qualified to participate in the presidential contest and that he did not garner the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election.
They claimed that votes credited to the APC candidate amounted to wasted votes by reason of corrupt practices that marred the election.
Furthermore, Atiku alleged that the electoral body deployed a third-party device that was used to intercept and divert votes to the APC and its candidate.
The petitioners have asked the court to either declare them winners or, in the alternative, order a fresh election. They also urged the court to compel INEC to withdraw the Certificate of Return it earlier issued to Tinubu of the APC.
