The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja, on Friday, March 24, ordered the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, should be served with copies of petitions seeking to nullify his election, through substituted means.
Vanguard reports that a three-man panel of the court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, directed that the petitions should be served on Tinubu, through his political party, the All Progressives Congress.
This comes after separate ex-parte applications that were brought before the court by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
The duo accused Tinubu of deliberately avoiding the service of their petitions on him. They told the court that several attempts they made to effect service of the petitions on Tinubu, proved ab%rtive.
According to the petitioners, the President-elect deliberately made himself elusive with a view to fr¥strating their effort to hand him copies of the petition as required by the law.
Consequently, relying on Section 6(6a) and 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act, as well as Paragraph 8 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022, the petitioners sought the intervention of the Court.
“Having heard the applications by counsel to the petitioners including the affidavit in support, the applications are hereby granted”, the Justice Ikyegh-led panel ruled.
