Atiku: PEPC Queried Over ‘Tinubu Presidential Legal Team’ Header On Judgment Copies

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) is under scrutiny about the peculiar presence of the ‘Tinubu Presidential Legal Team’ header on CTC copies of the judgment, raising suspicions over the court’s impartiality.

This is coming as PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar’s team asserted that it is crucial for PEPC to clarify why the respondents’ headers were included on the CTC copies, while the copies given to the petitioners did not bear the same markings.

Atiku media team in a statement by Phrank Shaibu, Special Assistant (Communications) to Atiku, question whether the Tinubu Legal Team might have received preferential treatment from the court, whilst they delayed in providing Certified True Copies (CTC) of its ruling to Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate, and his legal team.

BIGPEN NIGERIA (https://bigpenngr.com) reports that the development has sparked curiosity, especially since the PDP’s lead counsel had publicly requested prompt access to the judgment, an appeal that Justice Haruna Tsammani had agreed to.

Phrank Shaibu, hinted that, the Tinubu Legal Team seemed to have received the judgment documents first, leading to speculation about possible undue favoritism.

The PEPC’s language during the judgment delivery has also caused disquiet, perceived as dismissive and demeaning towards the petition, he said.

He said that the header, appearing on all 798 pages of the document, suggests that the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team may have been the originator of the document – a serious matter that demands explanation from PEPC.

“We need to restate that the ‘Tinubu Presidential Legal Team’ on the top left-hand corner of all the 798 pages is neither a monochrome nor a metadata. It is actually a HEADER, meaning that except for a valid explanation, the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team is the originator of the document. For the purposes of clarity, “a header is text that is placed at the top of a page, while a footer is placed at the bottom of a page. Typically, these areas are used for inserting information such as the name of the document, the chapter heading, page numbers, creation date, and the like.” On the other hand, watermark is “a faint design made in some paper during manufacture that is visible when held against the light and typically identifies the maker of the document.”

“The PEPC must, on its honour if indeed it still has any, clarify why the court chose to put the header of the Tinubu Legal Team on a CTC copy of its judgment document, while the only emblem that should have been on the document is the stamp of the Court of Appeal of Nigeria.

“Again, the PEPC must explain why it came to the discretionary decision of having the Respondents have a custody of the judgement earlier in the day on Friday while only making same available to the Petitioners later in the day, and only after the lead counsel to Atiku and PDP had written a second letter (the first was on Thursday) to the court demanding for copies of the judgment.

“Moreover, we have it on good authority that when the PEPC was informed that the CTC copies of the judgment given to the Respondents was already circulating in the public domain with the header of TPLT on it, a further delay was necessitated by the need for it to undertake a laundry of the documents by removing the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team header before handing over same to the lawyers of Atiku.

“Whereas the legal team of the PDP and Atiku have statutory 14 days to prepare its appeal to the Supreme Court, the PEPC had erased 2 days out of that 14 days, no thanks to the PEPC whose Chairman, Justice Tsamani had promised to make available the CTC copy of the judgment to Atiku a day after its judgement was rendered, which ought to have been on Thursday.

“Nigerians and the world are earnestly waiting for answers to these posers as the legal challenge shifts to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, it will validate suspicions that there were external factors involved in the formulation of the judgment and bring the entire judiciary of Nigeria into disrepute.

“Make no mistake about it. This legal challenge to the electoral banditry of February 25, which has now shifted to the apex court, is not about Atiku. It is indeed our last ditch effort to salvage our country and deepen our democracy. Against the background of the decimation of nearly all of the institutions of state including the Independent National Electoral Commission which dragged us into this quagmire, our intent is to ensure that the judiciary, the last hope of the common man does not go to the dogs”.