Tribunal: “Atiku is not a Nigerian”

In its response to the suit by the PDP challenging the APC victory in the Feb 22 presidential election, the ruling party has said that Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate Atiku Abubakar is not a citizen of Nigeria by birth.

He ought not to have even been allowed in the first place to contest the election, the party argued before the appeal tribunal on Thirsday.

APC also faulted the claim by the petitioners that they obtained the authentic results of the February 23, 2019 election from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s server showing that they won the election.

INEC declared the APC alongside its candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, winner of the election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku, whom it said polled 11,262,978 votes.

But Atiku and his party stated in their petition that “from the data in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server…the true, actual and correct results” from “state to state computation” showed that Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes defeat Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.

They said the results were the total votes scored by the candidates in 35 states and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, as there was “no report on sever” about the results from Rivers State as of February 25, 2019.

By calculation, Atiku and PDP claimed to have defeated Buhari by 1,615,302 votes.

In its reply filed through its lead counsel, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the APC said the data and computation of results on state-by-state basis were not legitimate.

According to the APCT, only the results declared by INEC were authentic.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku’s boss for eight years claimed in a book that the Yola politician is nit exactly a Nigerian.

Outlawed IPOB leader Nnamidi Kanu also echoed this in the run-ip to the election.