By Stephen
Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President and Presidential Candidate, of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP,may have played into the hand of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and President Muhammadu Buhari, of the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC, by rushing to the Election Petition Tribunal based on the information at his disposal that he won the 2019 Presidential election.
cr He had reeled out figures , which he had alleged was from the Commission, INEC, server. The result , which was seen in several quarters both within and outside the country as authentic made headline news in major Newspapers in the country as the online publications also feasted on it.
The PDP Candidate had petitioned the Tribunal , claiming that he scored 1.6 million votes above Buhari, the APC, Candidate, who was declared winner by Mahmood Yakubu, a Professor and Chairman of the Electoral umpire and therefore should be reversed. The INEC boss had announced that the APC Presidential Candidate won the election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat Atiku, the PDP, Flag bearer who polled 11,262,978 votes in the February 23, 2019.
Signs that Atiku may be fishing in troubled waters emerged when the Commission accused the PDP Candidate of fabricating the results of the Presidential election to win public sympathy and to prove his case at the Tribunal. In apparent response to Atiku’s Petition before the Tribunal, the Commission had distanced itself from the alleged electronic sheet that purportedly contained the authentic results of the Presidential election.
The Commission had petitioned the Tribunal, claiming that ”it does not share information with an unclassified entity and therefore any information purportedly derived from an unofficial source which is different from the result declared by the body is not authentic but rather was invented for a purpose: to create Constitutional crisis.
The Commission maintained in the 291 -page response that it had never transmitted Presidential election results since 1999 and now through electronic channels , but had always used manual Collation as as stipulated by the Electoral Act . Atiku may have shot himself on the leg when the Commission denied the existence of electronic transmission of results as alien to the country’s Electoral Act.
INEC response may have given ammunition to the Buhari and his Party, APC, to complicate the PDP Candidate case by insisting that he was a Cameroonian and therefore not qualified to contest the Presidential election. The Party had assemble a team of legal luminaries to argue out their case at the Tribunal that Atiku has no reason of heading to the Tribunal because he is not a Nigerian and therefore ought not to have contested the election in first instance.
The Party legal team may also be putting final touches to their documentary evidence to head to the Conventional Court to prove that the business mogul and the PDP Presidential Candidate was not a Nigerian and therefore should be deported to Cameroon. Abdulrahman Dambazau, a retired Lt General and minister of Interior may be waiting in the wings for a Presidential directive if it gets its way in the Tribunal and the Court to deport the PDP Candidate to give the party a breather. Close sources informed the Value News that the PDP Candidate did not see the gang up of INEC and the APC to frustrate him as anything as he assembled a good number of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, confront the INEC, Buhari and APC ,Legal Team.
The question on the lips of most people was that if the Yakubu led INEC , claimed that the Presidential election result electronic result sheets allegedly obtained by Atiku , the PDP Candidate were not authentic , how did the APC leadership knew that the Party has hacked the Commission Server, an indication that there might be some elements of truth in his claims.
Despite plot by the INEC officials and the APC leadership to force the PDP Candidate to soft-pedal in the pursuit of his petition before the Tribunal , Atiku, according to sources has vowed to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion to obtain justice. He was said to have told those that cares to listen that there s no going back on the case as both INEC , APC and president Buhari are fighting a lost battle.
