PDP’s Review C’ttee Says Atiku Won Presidential Poll, Waiting on Tribunal

•Ex-VP, Obi to close cases against Tinubu tomorrow 

•Petitioners continue to tender additional exhibits

Chuks Okocha and Alex Enumah in Abuja

The  Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) select committee of the National Working Committee (NWC), summoned to review the 2023 general election, yesterday, commenced sitting and insisted that the party’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar, won the presidential election and only waiting for the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

This is as Atiku and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Mr Peter Obi, will tomorrow, Thursday, close their individual cases challenging the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the February 25 presidential election.

At the same time, barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Allied People’s Movement (APM), is expected to call its sole witness and close its case today.

However, giving a preview and synopsis of the meeting, the National Organising Secretary of the PDP, Bature Umar, said, “This party believes that Atiku Abubakar won the election but we are in court  and without prejudice to what the court will decide, we will keep it aside. Let me acknowledge that this meeting is not a NEC meeting but an interactive meeting with the aim to jump-starting a reconciliation process.

“Let me give a preview of our performance in the last election. In the State House of Assemblies, we have 342 members, we have 116 members in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, we have 36 members and we have 13 Governors. We believe strongly that the ongoing tribunal cases in Kaduna, Nasarawa, Ogun, Kaduna and Sokoto States will be in our favour.”

He said yesterday’s meeting was the first meeting after the general election, explaining that the party carefully and deliberately called for the meeting to douse the pressure or tension within the party as a result of the aftermath of the 2023 elections.

“As the Acting National Chairman said, we started these meetings with the ex-officio, where we briefed them on our performance in the 2023 election and gave an update on the level of party management. We also discussed the challenges of state chapters.

“We also looked at the issue of vacant positions within the state chapters and other various organs of the party because of swinging membership. Some people went to other parties and all that. We sought suggestions on how to improve the party.

“We are here today and everyone knows what happened in 2023. We contributed both individually and collectively. If you rise to speak, I beg you to spell out your own role in 2023 elections, either positive or negative before you jump to accuse someone else either negative or positive.

“Everybody has a role to play. When you rise to speak, please, tell us the role you played. You can accuse anybody here for playing pro or anti-party activities. The aim is when we are through, we will have an idea of what to do with the party before we move to other organs like the national caucus, NEC for the way forward for the party.

“I believe there is hope for the party because our membership is still very strong. We are conscious of the issues because we went to Port Harcourt and I am sure, that will come up here. I will explain why we went to Port Harcourt. We believe there are people here who will accuse some of our elders of certain roles they played.

“In my state, somebody suggested that we should suspend a member but I said no. He is free to go to anywhere he wants to go. Suspending him means you are acknowledging that he has done something bad to the party. Suspension is not an answer to a bad behaviour towards the party,” the National Organising Secretary stated.

In his speech, Acting Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Adolphus Wabara, urged members of the party not to despair.

According to him, “We should not despair. We are in politics! As our acting National Chairman mentioned, they stole our mandate. We hope the tribunal and the courts will give us back our stolen mandate.

“Much as some of us may disagree with the synopsis, because we are still in court, we should mind what we are going to say today so it doesn’t work against us in the court. Let us watch how we attack ourselves. There will be time for that. The BOT waits to take some advisory decisions but then, this is not the time.”

Earlier, the acting national chairman of PDP, Umar Damagum, had said the meeting  would give the party the opportunity to review the outcome of the last general election and to share ideas about how to strengthen the party to face the challenges ahead.

“We have had series of meetings with the members of the National Ex officio, state Chairmen, select BoT and members of the National Assembly. This is a continuation of that meeting and it was borne out of what has happened during those meetings and we said there was  need for us to call this one.

“Initially the meeting was supposed to be for only the founding fathers of this party and we realised that after almost twenty something years of the existence of this party a lot of people have also graduated to be founding fathers.

“From our first governors of those years, they may not be the real founding fathers, but also they have contributed their own to the party to be recognised as members of this great party and leaders in their own right.

“This meeting is going to be an interactive session and I want us to be conscious of the fact that while making your contributions, we should be mindful of the fact that we are one family. Anybody that is in this hall today is here by the virtue of the fact that he/she meant well for this party.

“I want to enjoin us to contribute in a manner that will not hurt the sensibilities of others. We are one family and so we shall remain,” the acting national chairman stated.

Atiku, Obi to Close Case against Tinubu Thursday

The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, will Thursday, close their individual cases challenging the declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.

This is as the Allied People’s Movement (APM), is expected to call its sole witness and close its case today.

The three petitioners in their separate petitions were seeking the nullification of the election of Tinubu over alleged irregularities, corrupt practices, non-compliance with the electoral laws amongst others.

The APM whose petition would be heard today is claiming that Tinubu ought not to be on the ballot over alleged double nomination of his then running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima and one Kabir Masari, who was initially nominated as a “place holder” Vice President nominee.

Following the consolidations of the three petitions at the close of the pre-hearing session on May 23, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC), allotted three weeks each to Atiku and Obi to prove their individual petitions.

The three weeks period, which started on May 30 is expected to end on June 20, but following a lost of two days in the hearing of the petitioners case, the five member panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani agreed to an extension of two days to make up for time lost.

Consequently, Atiku and Obi would now close their case tomorrow, Thursday June 22.

At yesterday’s proceedings, Atiku’s lawyer, Chief Chris Uche (SAN) drew the court’s attention to the fact that they had lost two days out of the days allotted to them and asked that the two days be returned to them.

Although while Atiku and Obi had hinted at calling 100 and 50 witnesses respectively in proving that the electoral process was manipulated to favour candidate of the All Progressives Congress, they however called 25 and seven respectively.

Both have tendered plethora of documents, which they believed would sway the panel to give them a favourable judgment.

Majority of the documents tendered included Certified True Copies (CTCs) of election results from polling units to wards, local governments, states and final results declared by INEC’s Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood.

The labour party through one of its witnesses tendered over 18,000 blurred exhibits of purported election results from several Local Government Areas ( LGAs) across the country.

The witnesses, which included subpoenaed adhoc staffs of INEC, all gave evidence to support claims of the petitioners that the results of the presidential election, unlike the Senate and House of Representatives results conducted simultaneously was not transmitted real time from the polling units ,using the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) to INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) portals.

At yesterday’s proceedings, the petitioners were still made frantic efforts to tender additional exhibits especially those from the electoral umpire.

Both Atiku and Obi had prayed the court to issue subpoenaed order on Mahmood to bring in some documents which they claimed was vital to their individual petitions.

They also accused INEC of lack of cooperation in respect of release of electoral documents needed to prove that the February 25 presidential election was not conducted in line with INEC’s regulations and guidelines for the election.

With respect to the Labour Party, the PREPEC, yesterday, challenged its lead counsel, Dr Levy Uzoukwu, SAN to present proof that it served INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners in the 36 States and the FCT summons to provide electoral documents.

According to the court, there seemed to be no evidence that the Labour Party issued subpoenas on the Resident Electoral Commissioners [REC] in the states where it was seeking documents.

According to the court, the party didn’t explore Section 74 of the Electoral Act, which stated that they must, on demand, provide documents within 14 days, pay a fine of two million or imprisonment, or both, for defaulters, adding that the party didn’t lodge a complaint on the delay of documents, and had also failed to apply the penalty clause as stipulated in Section 74, adding that whatever happened between the Labour and INEC was without the involvement of the Court.

Although at the end of cross-examination of a witness, Mrs Clarita Ogah, who in her evidence submitted that there was no technical glitch during the February 25 presidential election on the Amazon Web Service in the six continents, INEC brought some additional documents before the court in line with the subpoena order on Mahmood.

While the documents would be tendered in court today, it is believed that the petitioners would still call additional witnesses before closing their cases on Thursday.

Speaking with journalists after the day’s proceedings, Uche disclosed that they might call additional five witnesses to have a round figure of 30 witnesses, adding that some of the documents to be tendered in the remaining two days would take the place of the remaining 70 witnesses.

“We are closing our case on Thursday, it was supposed to end today (Tuesday) but because we lost two days, one of which was the June 12 public holiday, the court graciously extended our time by two days,” he explained.

Hearing continues today.