Declare me winner now – Atiku tells Tribunal

Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has filed a petition to challenge the declaration of Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the presidential election.

The petition marked CA/PEPC/05/2023 was filed before the presidential election petition tribunal late hours on Tuesday.

In the petition filed through his team of lawyers led by Joe Gazama, Abubakar claimed that Tinubu was not qualified to contest the election.

He submitted that Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the poll was “invalid by reason of non-compliance with the provisions of the electoral act, 2022”.

“The 2nd respondent (Tinubu) was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast at the election,” the petition reads.

“The 2nd respondent was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the election.”

The PDP candidate wants the tribunal to nullify Tinubu’s victory and withdraw the certificate of return issued to him.

He prayed the court to declare him the winner, having secured the second-highest number of lawful votes at the election.

Earlier on Tuesday, Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), lodged his own petition seeking to void Tinubu’s victory as the president-elect.

Tinubu secured 8,794,726 votes to defeat Abubakar who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Obi with 6,101,533 votes in the election held on February 25.