Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, yesterday, in Abuja, admitted the Chicago State University educational documents of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as exhibits.
Also yesterday, the president formally opened his defense in a petition filed against his election by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Abubakar Atiku.
The educational documents tendered to establish his attendance and graduation at the American university comprised the admission letter offered Tinubu by the famous Institution among others.
Tinubu, through his counsel, also tendered his US Visa documents which indicated that he regularly visited the United States of America (USA) unhindered between 2011 and 2021.
Tinubu, who tendered the documents to refute allegations of criminality contained in the petition against him, also made available to the court all documents of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) which cleared him for the US trips.
Also admitted as exhibits by the court are the United States of America’s Embassy letter of April 4, 2003 which is a response to a letter of the Nigerian Police dated February 3, 2003 which claimed that the Embassy had no criminal records of Tinubu in the USA.
The documents were admitted in spite of rigorous objections against their respective admissibility by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
However, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) who are the 1st and 3rd respondents in the petition did not object to the admission of all the documents.
Apart from the educational documents, the Court further admitted an originating summons of a suit instituted at the Supreme Court by the attorneys-general of Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Sokoto states challenging the educational background of Tinubu to stand for the 2023 presidential election.
Similarly, newspaper publications on several suits filed against Tinubu by several groups were submitted.
Meanwhile, the president will on July 5 open his defence at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, in a petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, against his declaration as winner of the February 25 presidential election.
Tinubu was on March 1, 2023 declared winner of the disputed election by INEC.
The decision by Tinubu to begin defence followed INEC’s dramatic decision on Tuesday to terminate its own defence in Obi’s petition after calling one witness and tendering four documents.
Although the electoral body had informed the Court of the decision to justify the conduct of the poll with three witnesses, its lead counsel, Mr Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud suddenly announced the closure of the INEC’S defence at the proceedings.
Tinubu, through his lawyer, told the court that his client was fully ready to kick-start the defence on July 5 with his witnesses and documents to justify the victory in the presidential election.
At yesterday’s proceedings, INEC’s witness, Dr Lawrence Bayode, admitted that the electoral body suffered glitches during the presidential election but maintained that the glitches did not in any way affect conduct of the election, collation of results and declaration of final results.
On the allegations of blurred result sheets on INEC’s portal, the deputy director of Information and Communication said that clear result sheets can still be obtained on request by those in need of them.
