*Obi lists 51 grounds, Atiku 35

 *Insist PEPC committed miscarriage of justice

Presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi have filed 86 grounds of appeal against the Judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani at the Supreme Court.

While Atiku, through his lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, listed 35 grounds of appeal, Obi through Dr. Levi Uzoukwu, SAN filed 51 grounds of appeal.

The two candidates expressed their grave disappointment over the dismissal of the grounds for their respective petitions, insisting they were grace miscarriage of justice, asking the Supreme Court to reverse the decisions.

Obi and the LP, in approaching the apex court insist that Justice Tsamani erred in law to have endorsed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential Candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election and that it was wrong for both INEC and the PEPC  to declare him winner of the election when many incontrovertible evidences proved otherwise.

In the reliefs Obi and the LP sought from the apex Court, four key points: allow the Appeal, set aside the Judgment of the PEPC, and grant the reliefs sought in the petition, either in the main or in the alternative.

On the issue of the 25% requirement for Abuja, Obi and the LP listed the particulars of error by the PEPC as follows:

“That the PEPC failed to appreciate that for the President to assume the office or position of the Governor of Abuja, is also under a mandate to secure 25% of the votes cast in the FCT”.

They also accused the PEPC of overlooking the fuller purport of section 299, which will be more glaring on a calm examination of section 301 of the constitution.

No date yet has been fixed for the hearing of the case.

*Atiku files 35 grounds of appeal 

On their part, the PDP and Atiku Abubakar lodged 35 grounds of appeal through their lawyers led by Chief Chris Uche, SAN, praying the Apex court to set aside the judgement the Court of Appeal delivered on September 6, which affirmed Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election that held on February 25.

The appellants told the apex court that the verdict of the Justice Haruna Tsammani panel which dismissed their petition against the presidential election, “was not only perverse, but occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice against him”.

Atiku maintained that the PEPC “erred in law, when it failed to nullify the presidential election on the grounds of non-compliance with the Electoral Act, 2022, even when evidence that was adduced before it, showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), acted in breach of extant laws and regulations guiding the conduct of elections”.

He accused the PEPC of reaching its unanimous decision based on gross misconstruction and misrepresentation of provisions of both the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and the Electoral Act, 2022.

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