President Bola Tinubu has urged the Supreme Court to reject Atiku Abubakar’s application to introduce fresh evidence in his appeal of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal’s judgment.
Atiku, the former Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general elections, alleged discrepancies and forgeries in President Tinubu’s academic records. A US court granted his request to compel Chicago State University to release Tinubu’s academic records, and now Atiku seeks to introduce these records in the Supreme Court.
In response, President Tinubu argued that the allegation of certificate forgery was not part of Atiku’s initial petition at the tribunal. He stated that the tribunal rightly struck out paragraphs in the petitioners’ replies that introduced new issues, including certificate forgery, which were not part of the main petition.
President Tinubu also asserted that Atiku’s application, granted by the US court, has no relevance to the pending appeal before the Supreme Court and does not arise from the tribunal’s record or judgment. He maintained that the entire appeal lacks merit and should be dismissed.
Atiku and the PDP filed a petition challenging the outcome of the 2023 presidential election. However, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, in a September 6 judgment, ruled that Atiku failed to prove the allegations in his petition. Atiku subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court on September 18, 2023, with no fixed date for the appeal’s hearing.
