Atiku Abubakar fights on after appeal court upholds Tinubu’s election

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has rejected the ruling of the court of appeal which upheld the election of President Bola Tinubu.

Mr Abubakar, who was candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, said he will appeal the ruling at the supreme court.

“I am therefore here to tell you that, though the judgment of the court yesterday is respected, it is a judgment that I refuse to accept. I refuse to accept the judgment because I believe that it is bereft of substantial justice,” he told journalists at a news conference, according his post on X.

Petitions dismissed

The presidential election tribunal on Wednesday dismissed the petitions filed by Mr Abubakar and the Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi, against Mr Tinubu’s election.

The court said allegations of fraud during the election were without merit.

The election was the most fiercely contested since the end of military rule in 1999, with three strong candidates for the first time. Mr Tinubu won with 37% of votes cast, against 29% for Mr Abubakar and 25% for Mr Obi.

Lead justice Haruna Tsammani, who read the verdict for more than six hours, said “the petitioners failed to prove allegations of corrupt practices and over-voting”.

He also said the petitioners failed to specify the polling units where they alleged that rigging took place and that the petitioners failed to provide any credible evidence to prove their allegations of suppression of votes in their strongholds.

The panel also said the electoral commission Inec was not bound to transmit results electronically and the failure to upload the photographic copies of polling unit results in real time did not invalidate the election.

Unenviable precedents

Mr Abubakar said the way the election was managed by Inec, “leaves behind unenviable precedents, which I believe the courts have a duty to redress.”

“Our gains in ensuring transparent elections through the deployment of technology was heavily compromised by INEC in the way it managed the last presidential election, and I am afraid that the judgement of the court as rendered by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal yesterday, failed to restore confidence in our dreams of free and fair elections devoid of human manipulations,” he said.