Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has said that signing affidavits in court on Saturdays did not violate any law in Nigeria.
At a media conference in Abuja on Sunday, October 22, Atiku’s aides presented slides indicating that some court documents were in the past signed on Saturdays.
It was in response to questions being asked by members of the public concerning Atiku’s Saturday, August 18, 1973 affidavit wherein he changed his name from Sadiq Abubakar to Atiku Abubakar.
At the briefing, Atiku’s media adviser, Paul Ibe said that findings by Atiku’s legal team showed that it wasn’t only Atiku that would sign an affidavit in court on a Saturday.
Ibe said: “We conducted research into the registry of the Lagos State high courts in the same year, 1973, to see if it was really an absurdity to have court papers signed on a Saturday.
“The outcome of our findings showed clearly that there are court papers that were signed on Saturdays in the year 1973! Atiku Abubakar’s affidavit was not the only one signed on Saturday as the corn-men would want you to believe.
“We hope that this discovery into Atiku’s Saturday affidavit by his own media team will rest this issue and provide the opportunity for Bola A. Tinubu’s team to come clean with its decades of forgeries and lies.
“Nigerians are waiting for them to put an end to this kindergarten Tom and Jerry that has done nothing but brought embarrassment and humiliation to our country and its people.
“Nigeria is a country of laws, and no one single man or woman, no matter how highly placed, is bigger than our laws”.
Atiku Abubakar, who was the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 presidential election, is challenging the victory of the winner of the poll, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The PDP candidate is presently at the Supreme Court, having lost the first leg of the legal battle at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
Describing the controversy over Atiku’s Saturday affidavit as mere shadow boxing, the aides insisted that the document was genuine.
Ibe said: “It was obvious from the start of their journey into futility that what the media aides and supporters of Bola A. Tinubu were doing was a random bite of the public profile of Atiku Abubakar until they found an item they could chomp with their filthy teeth.
“It was amusing watching them running kiti-kata like a person wey drink water no wan drop cup – as we say in Naija parlance of a restless soul on a fruitless journey.
“So, eventually, they found that the affidavit that Atiku Abubakar deposed to on August 18, 1973, wherein he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar was signed on a Saturday.