The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja gave its final verdict on the petitions by Atiku Abubakar and the PDP at about 16.54pm Wednesday.
The verdict was anti-climatic as the chairman announced the dismissal of the petitions in their entirety.
By inferenence, President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election on 23 February has thus been confirmed.
Indications that the verdict was heading towards this conclusion were clear as the Tribunal picked on grounds after grounds of the petition, clinically knocking them off, one after the other, especially the major pillars: the existence of an INEC server and President Muhammadu Buhari’s eligibility to stand for election.
The INEC server did not exist and Buhari was eminently qualified, educationally, to stand for election, the Tribunal declared.
The Trubunal, which knocked out petition by APC against Atiku’s citizenship of Nigeria and PDP’s petition on financial inducement at polls against Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, declared that there was no ground for Atiku and PDP to convince it that Muhammadu Buhari did not have educational qualification to be eligible to contest in the 2019 Presidential election and therefore knocked out the petition.
Justice Garba Lawal Mohammed, who read the judgment, said the petitioners failed to prove any of the grounds canvassed as provided by the law. Their failure to do so, was detrimental to their case and made the petitions bound to fail, he said.
He said the witnesses brought to court were also unable to prove allegations of electoral malpractice or violence at the polling units. He said the polling agents that could do so were not called to give evidence.
Details later…
