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The PEPC on Wednesday delivered a 12-hour judgment on appeals arising from the presidential election, confirming the election of President Bola Tinubu.
Atiku and Obi rejected the court ruling, promising to approach the Supreme Court.
Obi's lead lawyer, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), disclosed to one of our reporters over the phone that he had received a copy of the judgment.
Atiku's special assistant on mass media, Phrank Shaibu, in a statement issued on Friday criticized PEPC for allegedly failing to provide a certified copy of the judgment to the former's legal team vice president.
Shaibu said: “By not providing Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, with certified copies of Wednesday's judgment to be submitted to the Supreme Court, the Election Petition Tribunal Presidential election is undermining efforts to seek justice for Atiku and Nigerians.” A copy of the verdict went viral on social media on Friday.
The 798-page document was signed by the PEPC secretary on September 8, 2023.
Meanwhile, the Lamidi Apapa faction of the LP said national chairman Julius Abure and Obi did not provide the polling station results to the court because they did not pay the party representatives.
The faction's spokesperson, Abayomi Arabambi, said this in an interview with one of our reporters.
Arabambi claimed that majority of the agents walked away with the polling station results when the party failed to pay them the promised N10,000 allowance. “Initially, no (voting) agents were paid and I remember telling Nigerians that this is something that could affect us after the election,” he said. None of my agents get paid. Of the more than 190,000 polling stations, we only told INEC that we have more than 130,000 polling stations, the rest have not been uploaded. Even among the 130,000 people we had, not a single agent sent their polling unit results to Peter Obi, we owe them 10,000 naira each.
“These people will not tell this truth to the world. That is why judges ask us whether we expect them to go and collect evidence for us in the market. You go to court without an EC8 form and these lawyers cannot calculate the total number of votes Obi claims to have received. These esteemed judges were very thorough and no one should abuse that. They only ask questions in accordance with the Electoral Act and the Nigerian Constitution.
“If you claim to have counted a majority of votes, what will you get? They cannot compile or present them in accordance with applicable domestic law. This is what made the judges even ask for Obi's actual score. If they have the poll results, they can continue their presentation to prove that the LP has certain votes in certain states. In this case, we know that INEC cannot modify your EC8 form except its own EC8 form. But if we paid all our agents we wouldn't have this problem.”
He added: “We have accepted Wednesday's court ruling and we are going back to the drawing board. Obi's insistence on going to the Supreme Court despite the series of explanations LP had to give at the Court of Appeal is completely unfortunate. However, he deserves our pity.
“I think going to the Supreme Court is a complete waste of time. The Supreme Court is not the court of first instance in presidential elections. The Court of Appeals is like that and its lawyers must say so. If they don't tell him, I'll remind Obi that there's nothing new.
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