Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of trying to harass and compromise the judiciary.
Atiku and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) are challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu, candidate of the APC, as the winner of the 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
One of the grounds in the petitioners’ suits was Tinubu’s inability to secure at least 25% of votes cast in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
But, Tinubu, through his counsel, Wole Olanipekun, argued that the FCT is the 37th state for electoral purposes and any other interpretation would “lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature.”
Atiku, in a statement signed by his media adviser, Paul Ibe on Saturday, said the APC and agents of Tinubu have “ceaselessly chosen to stand in the way of justice by making “catastrophic threats to anarchy if justice is not served according to their whims.”
The statement reads in part: “The plot of the APC is simple: intimidate the judiciary, threaten judges with arrest so that they will bow to their will. This is a playbook from 2019, when they removed the CJN and then replaced him with Tanko Muhammad, who himself was later accused of corruption by his colleagues at the Supreme Court and resigned shamefully.”