13-hour PEPT judgment raises more dust, exposes petitions’ loopholes

The judgment of the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal where President Bola Tinubu was reaffirmed as the winner of the contentious February 25 presidential poll may have come and gone, but the memory and impact of the verdict would continue to linger.

Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress had scored a total of 8.7 million votes to defeat the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, who polled 6.9 million and 6.1 million votes, respectively.

The five-member panel had nullified the petitions of Atiku and Obi in the 12-hour judgment delivered on Wednesday. The tribunal was chaired by Justice Haruna Tsammani and assisted by Justices Stephen Adah, Monsurat Bolaji-Yusuf, Moses Ugo and Abba Mohammed. But Atiku and Obi both rejected the verdict and vowed to challenge it at the Supreme Court.