After the Nigerian presidential election held in February 2019 and the victory of the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) at the polls, the opposition party, (People’s Democratic Party, PDP) and its candidate, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, were not quite convinced they lost and have challenged the results in court, alleging electoral fraud.
On the 27th of February 2019, the country’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission, declared that President Buhari had won the Presidential elections with 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku, whom it said polled 11,262,978 votes.
In their 139-page petition, the complainants stated that Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes against Buhari, whom they claimed received 16,741,430 votes. In lieu of his perceived imminent victory, Atiku’s followers have consistently trended the hashtags #AtikuIsComing on the social media platform, Twitter. Unfortunately, since they filed a petition on March 18, 2019, Atiku’s journey to being heard has been tumultuous.
The Tribunal Journey
The tribunal fixed May 15 as the date to begin hearing the filed petitions in the nation’s capital, Abuja. The pre-hearing sessions held on 15 and 16 May, chaired by a five-man panel, headed by the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulcachuwa in Abuja.
Bulcachuwa later recused herself following a petition by Atiku, of the likelihood of being bias as her husband is a senator in the ruling party, the APC.
Additionally, the Independent National Electoral Commission alleged that Atiku and his team hacked the server which contained results of the election. However, the electoral body has in a recent turn of events claimed they did not store any results on the servers, seeing as the election results were transmitted manually. Atiku, however, remains positive he won and has continued to appeal to the supreme court to let him access the “Central Server. The Presidential Election Tribunal, led by Justice Mohammed Garba, has ruled against this appeal by Atiku.
According to Sahara Reporters “The Justice-Mohammed-Garba-led tribunal, in its unanimous ruling delivered on June 24, 2019, dismissed the petitioners’ application on the grounds that if granted, it would amount to pre-judging the main issue meant for trial during the substantive hearing of the petition.”
Counsel to President Buhari, Festus Keyamo (a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and the official spokesperson for the President) said they are ready for when the opposition opens their case and are excited that so far, the ruling has gone in their favour. He described it as a “3-0” win in Buhari’s favour.
The hearing, which began on July 4, started with tendering of election results from eleven states, including Niger, Yobe, Katsina, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kano, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna and Zamfara which they limited their petition to.
So far, about 10 witnesses have been called, one of which include Buba Galadima, a former ally of president Buhari, who was detained by the DSS few days after the presidential election. Other witnesses include Independent National Electoral Commission’s ad hoc workers who served in different capacities during the election and party agents of the PDP.
