Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), says the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, has dual
citizenship of Nigeria and Guinea.
Atiku, in a fresh process he filed before the Presidential
Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, also accused Tinubu of not
disclosing facts of his constitutional qualifications in his Form EC9 submitted
to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), contrary to the
provisions of the law.
In the response filed by his lead counsel, Mr Chris Uche,
SAN, Atiku said that his identity, comprising age, state of origin and
educational qualifications, had never been in dispute.
He insisted that Tinubu was constitutionally disabled from
contesting for the office of president.
The PDP presidential candidate, amongst other things,
alleged that Tinubu was unfit to lead Nigeria, having been indicted for
drug-related offences in the United States and made to forfeit a sum of
$460,000 as a compromise agreement.
Reacting to Tinubu’s response in which he described Atiku as
a serial election loser, the former Vice President said that Tinubu was a giant
in forfeiture, drug-related offences and failure to disclose dual nationality
to INEC.
“The comparison of the second respondent (Tinubu) with the
first petitioner ( Atiku) who had attained the eminent position of Vice
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for eight years is totally
unfounded”, he said.
Atiku said that he was challenging the declaration of Tinubu
as president-elect on the grounds that Tinubu and APC did not win a majority of
the lawful votes cast in the Feb. 25 presidential election.
He said that Tinubu failed part of the constitutional
requirements, having failed to secure 25 per cent of the votes cast in the
Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as constitutionally required.
He argued that the return of Tinubu as the winner of the
2023 presidential election was undue, unlawful and invalid because he did not
meet the constitutional requirements.
Atiku said that Tinubu deliberately chose not to answer
points of substance in the petition and opted for extraneous facts, contradictory,
evasive, speculative and vague assertions.
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