The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, who is also a former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, on Saturday, in Abuja, inaugurated his legal team to challenge the result of the February 23 presidential election.
The team is headed by Dr Livy Uzoukwu (SAN). The mandate of the legal team, according to sources close to both the national leadership of the party and Atiku, is to ask the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal to sack President Muhammadu Buhari. It was also being considered, that the team was debating to either ask the tribunal to declare the former Vice President as the winner of the election or order a rerun. The Independent National Electoral Commission had, on Wednesday, declared Buhari of the All Progressives Congress, as the winner of the election. However, Atiku, on Thursday, rejected the result, citing several malpractices including the use of the military to allegedly perfect voter intimidation and suppression of votes in the PDP strongholds; connivance by the INEC officials and security agents and the ruling party to manufacture bogus figures and outright falsification of the results from the polling units. Atiku said on Saturday that he was encouraged to go ahead with the court case because of the presence of fearless men and women of the Bench.
He said, “I have just inaugurated my legal team and charged them with the responsibility of ensuring that our stolen mandate is retrieved. I am encouraged by the presence of fearless men and women of the Bench. The judiciary, which had, in the past, discharged itself ably is once again being called upon to deliver judgement on this matter that will be untainted by lucre and ‘uncowed’ by the threat of immoral power.” He also assured Nigerians, according to a statement by his Media Adviser, Paul Ibe, that “sooner than later, these noble dispensers of justice will give a judgement that will represent a historic denunciation of electoral fraud and mandate banditry.”
Photo Credit: Getty
