The legal teams of Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), respectively, have received the Certified True Copies (CTCs) of the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
The PEPC had on Wednesday upheld the election of President Bola Tinubu, dismissing the petitions filed by Atiku and Obi.
Atiku and Obi have rejected the judgment and vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.
According to reports, Atiku’s lead counsel, Chris Uche, said the CTCs were received on Friday.
“We have received the CTCs and are studying them,” Uche said. “We will file our appeal to the Supreme Court within 14 days.”
Obi’s lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu, also confirmed receiving the CTCs.
“We have received the CTCs and are going through them,” Uzoukwu said. “We will file our appeal to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”
The Lamidi Apapa faction of the LP has accused the party’s national chairman, Julius Abure, and Obi of failing to provide results of polling units at the PEPC because they did not pay party agents.
The faction’s spokesman, Abayomi Arabambi, said most of the agents went away with the result sheets of the polling units when the party failed to pay them their stipend of N10,000 as promised.
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Arabambi described Obi’s plan to appeal the PEPC’s judgment as a waste of time and resources.
“We have accepted Wednesday’s verdict at the tribunal, and we are going back to the drawing board,” Arabambi said. “Obi’s insistence on going to the Supreme Court is a waste of time.”
The LP’s national legal adviser, Kehinde Edun, dismissed Arabambi’s claims, saying they were untrue.
“That (not paying agents) is a lie,” Edun said. “The law is that you have to prove your case, and the court is only concerned with what is before it.”
Obi’s media aide, Tai Obasi, said the Apapa faction was part of the old order that the LP was fighting to change.
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“You cannot stop halfway when you want to do something right,” Obasi said. “That’s why we are heading to the Supreme Court.”
The chief spokesman of the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, said the campaign would not join issues with the Apapa faction.
“We won’t want to join issues with the Apapa faction,” Tanko said. “Let them continue with their allegation. We will see how it can take them.”
The Supreme Court will hear the appeal from Atiku and Obi in the coming months.
