PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Buhari seeks cancellation, rerun in 20 states •Files petition; lines up 151 witnesses •Ex-NBA president leads…

THE presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd),

through his party, has asked the presidential election tribunal to cancel the result of the April 16 presidential poll and order a rerun in about 20 states across the six geopolitical zones.

This development is coming just as President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice-President Namadi Sambo, who won the April 16 presidential poll, had concluded arrangement to confront Major-General Buhari’s legal fireworks with a crack team of legal luminaries.

The national chairman of the party, Prince Tony Momoh, who led some other officials of the party arrived on the premises of the Court of Appeal, venue of the National Election Tribunal at about 4:30 p.m., on Sunday to file the petition.

The deadline for the filing of petitions on the April 16 presidential election expires today.

In the application which was filed through its lead counsel, Ebun Sofunde (SAN), the party is seeking the cancellation of the election on two grounds: substantial non-compliance with the provision of the Electoral Act 2010 and gross malpractice and irregularities.

Addressing journalists after filing the petition, Momoh stated that 151 witnesses were already on the ground to testify against the fairness of the election.

According to him: “The fact that we are in court today points to the fact that those lapses we pointed out to INEC before the election were not adequately addressed, if at all. We said from the outset and still believe that elections in Nigeria can be free and fair only when people who are registered to vote are allowed to vote; that the votes are counted and that the votes count in the choice of those who seek their mandate.

“We say the results announced to the world were manipulated, where the election took place, between the polling units and the collation centres.

“We have made certain demands to INEC to ensure that the materials listed for inspection for use in our petition against the election are available at INEC national headquarters to be accessed. We will insist on examination of the documents at INEC’s national headquarters. For example, we are aware that the original of forms EC8D and EC8E are with INEC here in Abuja. Form EC8D is the summary of results of all local governments in each state and form EC8E is a summary of results of all the states of the federation and FCT.

“We are not shouting wolf by going to court. The PDP and all other stakeholders in the Nigerian enterprise have asked us to go to court. Our candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, says he is not going to court and that between 2003 and 2007 he was in court for a total of 50 months.

“But we, the party that sponsored him and his running mate, Tunde Bakare, have decided to go to court to question the conduct of an election that has been trumpeted to the world as free, fair and credible.

“We are even encouraged by what papers have published that the ruling party has packaged a legal team to question the scores credited to our candidate in his areas of strength. This is acceptance that the elections were flawed.”

It will be recalled that the party had on Friday filed an ex parte application demanding for men and materials used for the said election.

In the application, the applicant had asked the National Election Tribunal to compel INEC and all its Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) to release certain election documents and personnel used for the election, which the applicant planned to use for the eventual filing of its petition.

The PDP candidate, President Goodluck Jonathan, had won the election with Buhari’s CPC coming a distant second.

Though Buhari said he would not personally challenge the outcome of the election, he noted that his party could challenge the result released by INEC. Both Buhari and his party had rejected the result of the election.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Tribune can reliably reveal that a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) will be leading the legal team of Jonathan and Vice-President Sambo as legal battle commences today over the presidential election.

It was gathered from the president’s camp that a loaded legal team had been put in place to defend the president’s mandate, with the former NBA president already tipped to lead the team.

A number of other Senior Advocates of Nigeria were also said to be on the team, which was being kept under wraps for now, according to the source.

The former NBA president led the association in the late 90s.

Though lawyer to former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, Ricky Tarfa SAN, had last Friday filed an ex parte application on the CPC’s behalf, suggesting that he was going to lead Buhari’s legal team, another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Sofunde led the legal team that filed the petition yesterday.

Tarfa’s name was completely missing in the new legal team representing the petitioner.

Sofunde would lead Abubakar Malami SAN, James Ocholi SAN and Awa Kalu SAN in prosecuting the petition.