The All Progressives Congress, APC, has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the just concluded general elections, Atiku Abubakar, is not a Nigerian.
In its response to the election petition filed by the PDP and Atiku before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, APC, the third respondent to the petition, said the petition was incompetent as Atiku was not a Nigerian by birth and thus not qualified to contest the office of the Nigerian President.
“Atiku is a Cameroonian and not a citizen of Nigeria by birth and ought not to have even been allowed in the first place, to contest the election,” it said.
In in the response filed through its counsel, Mr. Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, the party insisted that “from available records Atiku was born on November 26, 1946, in Jada Adamawa, in Northern Cameroon” and was therefore a citizen of Cameroon.
“His father was Garba Atiku Abdukadir who died in December 1957.
“Prior to 1919, Cameroon was being administered by Germany.
“But following the defeat of Germany in World War I which ended in 1918, Cameroon became a League of Nations mandate territory which was split into French Cameroons and British Cameroons in 1919.”
The party argued that following a plebiscite held in 1961, Northern Cameroon, which it said included Adamawa, preferred a union with Nigeria, while Southern Cameroon aligned with the mother country.
“The transition took place on June 1, 1961. It was as a result of that plebiscite that Northern Cameroon which included Adamawa became a part of Nigeria and by derivation, the 1st petitioner (Atiku) became a citizen of Nigeria but not by birth.”
The APC therefore maintained that Atiku “had no right to be voted for as a candidate in the election to the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria held on February 23, 2019 across Nigeria”.
The party equally picked holes in the petitioners’ claim that they obtained the authentic results of the February 23, presidential election which showed that they won from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s server.
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It contended that only the results declared by INEC were authentic saying that the data and computation of results on state-to-state basis relied on by the party were not legitimate.
It stated, “The 3rd respondent denies the averment and allegation contained in paragraph 21 of the petition and states that the purported data in the 1st respondent’s server (INEC) and the purported computation of results on state-to-state basis under the scores of the 1st petitioner (Atiku) and 2nd petitioner (PDP) are not legitimate and same are not products of any lawful election and conducted by the 1st respondent (INEC).
“The 3rd respondent states further that, no person or body in Nigeria, apart from the 1st respondent is saddled with the statutory duty of conducting elections and declaring results.
“The 3rd respondent states further that, it is only the results declared for the parties by the 1st respondent that is authentic.
“The petitioners are put to the strictest proof of the averment.”
It maintained that “all votes purportedly cast” for him in the election as declared by INEC, “are wasted votes.”
The party therefore prayed the tribunal for an order that “the petitioners are not entitled to any of the prayers being sought by them” and also to “dismiss the petition with substantial cost as same is devoid of any merit and also founded on frivolity, having not been initiated bonafide but on palpable abuse of judicial process”.
Recall that INEC had on February 27, 2019 declared President Muhammadu Buhari, candidate of the APC winner of the election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Atiku, who polled 11,262,978 votes.
However, Atiku and the PDP rejected the results claiming that they won. In their 139-page petition which relied on five grounds, they said “from the data in the 1st respondent’s (INEC’s) server…the true, actual and correct results from state-to-state computation showed that Atiku polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari,” whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.
APC’s response to the petition comprised a notice of preliminary objection and 504-paragraph reply to the petition on merit, which proposed to rely on 47 sets of documents.
