The hearing of petitions challenging the declaration of the All Progressives Congress, APC’s standard bearer, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the President-elect will begin on Monday, May 8.
Announcing the date, the APC National Legal Adviser, Ahmad El-Marzuq, said correspondence from the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, sitting in Abuja, confirmed the hearing for next week.
He said the APC legal team had been briefed and was ready to defend the party’s mandate.
“We have been briefed about the hearing coming up next week. But who told you the election petitions at the tribunal must necessarily be concluded before May 29?
“Are you saying if they were not concluded before President Buhari leaves office, the government should be left in a vacuum and the president-elect should not be sworn in? It is not a must,’’ he stated in response to a question about the time it would take for the petitions to be decided.
Also, a top official of the election petitions tribunal affirmed that the hearing proceedings would start on Monday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to release the information, he said the Presidential election tribunal has been fixed for Monday, May 8, for the hearing of the petitions challenging the victory of the President-elect, Bola Tinubu.’
A member of Tinubu’s legal team, Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, also said the hearing had been scheduled to commence next week.
Oyetibo, explained that the hearing is to clarify if there are any applications before the main hearing will start. “The timetable will be set for the hearing of the substantive matters.”
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, had on March 1 declared Tinubu the President-elect on grounds that his party scored the majority of votes cast in the polls.
The former Lagos state governor had polled 8.8 million votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party, who scored 6.9million votes, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who got 6.1million votes and 15 others.
Dissatisfied with the results, Atiku and Obi had filed separate petitions, seeking to annul the election and declare them as winners of the polls.