Nigeria’s Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal will on Monday resume sitting on the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate in February 23 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, according to Punch.
It was an assumption on Friday that the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, had appointed another judge appointed as her replacement on the five-man panel to hear the case.
Justice Bulkachuwa withdrew as a member and head of the five-man panel on May 22, following the allegation of the likelihood of bias levelled against her by the PDP and Atiku.
The tribunal was said to have issued and served the notice for the Monday’s hearing on all parties to the petition on Friday.
The leader of the legal team of the PDP and Atiku, Dr Livy Uzoukwu SAN was also said to have confirmed the development to Punch on Friday.
Asked if he was sure that Justice Bulkachuwa’s replacement on the panel had been named, Uzoukwu said, “It is the presumption that we arrived at when we received the hearing notice on Friday. But we do not have any information about it.”
The development came barely a week after Atiku and his party wrote to Bulkachuwa, reminding her of her promise to appoint her replacement on the panel to enable the hearing of their petition to resume.
In their letter sent to Bulkachuwa on May 31, they said that they were already running against time due to the “strict requirement of keeping to the constitutional calendar for a petition”.
The petitioner’s letter signed on behalf of Uzoukwu by a lawyer in their legal team, Silas Onu, stated that as of May 31 when the letter was delivered at Bulkachuwa’s chambers, it was nine days since she recused herself from the tribunal yet nothing had been heard about her replacement.