The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja has announced Wednesday, September 6, 2023, as the date to deliver judgement in the petitions challenging the outcome of the  2023 presidential election.

The Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal, Umar Bangari, announced the date to journalists in Abuja on Monday, September 4.

Bangari said everything has been put in place to ensure that the judgement in the three petitions pending before the court is delivered hitch-free.

They are the petitions filed by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku, Abubakar; the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi; and the Allied Peoples Movement, (APM).

Bangari said adequate security has also been put in place, adding that only the invited members of political parties and the general public would be allowed into the court room.

This, he said, was to avoid congestion and security breaches.

He stated that media houses that wished to televise the judgement would be allowed to do so but at no cost to the court.

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Atiku, on June 23, closed his case after calling 27 out of the 100 witnesses and tendered electoral documents.

Obi called 13 witnesses.

The legal team of President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima also closed defence in the petitions after calling one witness.

The legal team of Tinubu had proposed to call 39 witnesses, but closed its defence after its witness in chief, the Senate Majority Leader, Michael Bamidele, testified.

It would be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on March 1, 2023, announced that Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) won the presidential election ahead of 17 other candidates that participated in the election.

It declared that Tinubu scored 8,794,726 votes to defeat the two major contenders – Atiku of the PDP, who came second with 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the Labour Party, who came third with 6,101,533 votes.

However, dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, both Atiku and Obi approached the court to invalidate it.

The duo, in their separate petitions, claimed that they won the presidential poll, as they challenged Tinubu’s eligibility to contest the election.

The petitioners prayed the court to nullify the election and order a fresh presidential election, with the exclusion of President Tinubu whom they argued was not qualified to participate.

The Star