*Files petition at Presidential Election Tribunal
The Labor Party’s presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, has formally filed a petition at the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja.
According to a tweet by Yunusa Tanko, the Chief Spokesperson of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council (LP-PCC), by filing the petition, “the process of reclaiming the people’s mandate has started.”
But Tanko provided no further details of the lawsuit now brought before the tribunal which is holding at the headquarters of the Court of Appeal, Three Arms Zone, Abuja.
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, had declared Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the candidate of ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the presidential election.
Tinubu defeated 17 other candidates scoring a total of 8,794,726 votes, and 25 per cent of the votes cast in 30 states, according to the electoral body.
Yakubu said Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second in the election.
Atiku polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election.
Peter Obi of the Labour Party came third in the election with a total of 6,101,533 votes while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
Obi is the only candidate that secured over 25 per cent of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, another constitutional requirement needed to be declared winner at the election, which neither Tinubu, nor Atiku met.
Obi however complained that the electoral body failed to declare the actual votes he got, but had suppressed his votes in what he described as “the height of criminality in electoral contest in the country”.