Presidential election tribunal begins sitting Wednesday

The presidential election petition tribunal will hold its inaugural sitting on Wednesday.

A notice of the sitting, a copy of which was obtained by TheCable, showed the tribunal will consider four petitions challenging President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory.

Among the petitions is that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Atiku Abubakar, its candidate.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Buhari winner of the February presidential election.

INEC had said while Buhari polled a total of 15,191,847 votes, Atiku, his closest challenger, got 11,262,978 votes.

But the PDP candidate faulted INEC’s claim, saying results obtained from INEC’s server show he got at least 1.6million votes more than Buhari.

Both the president and INEC have countered the claim.

Apart from Atiku’s petition, the other three were from Aminchi Habu, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM); Ambrose Owuru of the Hope Democratic Party (HDP) and Geff Chizee Ojinka of Coalition for Change (C4C).

The tribunal will, during the inaugural sitting, set out modalities for operations including dates for hearing.