Atiku Camp Queries Why the CTC of the PEPT Judgment Bears 'Tinubu Presidential Legal Team' As Header
The Punch newspaper reports that the camp of the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, has queried why the Certified True Copies of the judgment of the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) bears the inscription, “Tinubu Presidential Legal Team”, ‘TPLT’, as its header.
The Atiku camp raised the alarm hours after it received the CTC of the PEPT judgment after some delay.
In a statement by the Special Assistant on Public Communications to the former Vice President, Mr. Phrank Shaibu, the camp asked the PEPT to clear the air on the controversy.
The statement in part:
“After causing a needless delay in availing the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his legal team Certified True Copies of its judgment, the PEPT must explain to Nigerians and the world ambiguities around why copies of the judgment bear the header of the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team.”
It noted that the header appears only on the CTC of the judgment issued to the respondents but the one that the petitioners received does not have it, querying why the Tinubu legal team is accorded special privileges.
The statement also questioned why the PEPT availed the Tinubu legal team copies of the judgment first before the plaintiffs even though Atiku’s lead counsel had pleaded in the open court for a speedy receipt of the document and Justice Haruna Tsammani promised to make it available the following day, Thursday.
It said:
“Again, the PEPC must explain why it came to the discretionary decision of having the respondents have custody of the judgment earlier in the day on Friday while only making the same available to the petitioners later in the day, and only after the lead counsel to Atiku and PDP had written a second letter (the first was on Thursday) to the court demanding for copies of the judgment.”
According to Shaibu, the appearance of the header, “Tinubu Presidential Legal Team” on the CTC of the PEPT judgment raised the suspicion that the President’s legal team prepared the document. He further alleged that the delay in issuing the document to the petitioners was caused by the need to remove the incriminating header after the PEPT was alerted to the fact that the document it issued to the respondent was already in the public domain and bore that header.
The statement said:
“‘Tinubu Presidential legal team’ on the top left-hand corner of all the 798 pages is neither a monochrome nor a metadata. It is actually a header, meaning that except for a valid explanation, the Tinubu Presidential legal team is the originator of the document.
The statement concluded that the PEPT must provide answers to these posers, otherwise, its action would validate the suspicions that its judgment was biased and bring the entire Nigerian judiciary to disrepute.
The Atiku camp further lamented that the PEPT has chucked off 2 out of the mandatory 14 days that the petitioners have to prepare their appeal to the Supreme Court.
Ifyafrica (
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