The presidential election tribunal has scheduled September 6 as the date for delivering its judgment on the petitions challenging Bola Tinubu’s election victory.
Umar Bangari, the registrar of the Court of Appeal, officially confirmed this on Monday.
During the election, Tinubu secured 8,794,726 votes, defeating Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with 6,984,520 votes and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) with 6,101,533 votes.
However, five political parties, including the PDP, LP, Action Peoples Party (APP), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), and the Action Alliance (AA), were dissatisfied with the results and filed separate petitions before the tribunal, seeking to nullify Tinubu’s victory.
Petitioners raise concerns in Tinubu’s presidential victory challenge
Among the various issues raised, the petitioners argued that Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, the vice-president, were ineligible to run for the presidential poll.
They alleged that the president had been indicted for drug trafficking in the United States, that the academic certificates submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were forged, and that Tinubu is a citizen of Guinea.
The petitioners also contended that since Tinubu failed to secure 25 percent of the votes in the federal capital territory (FCT), he should not have been declared the winner of the February 25 election.
On August 1, a five-member panel of the tribunal reserved judgment after hearing the final written arguments from the counsels representing Atiku and Obi.
In a statement notifying the public of the judgment date, the chief registrar stated that live broadcasting would be permitted for transparency, and only accredited individuals, including counsel and political party representatives, would be allowed inside the courtroom.
Interested members of the public were advised to watch the proceedings on television.