President Bola Tinubu has said the claim that his credentials contained discrepancies was merely cooked up by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.
Tinubu said Atiku resorted to cooking up allegations against him when he and the PDP failed to secure evidence to support their claim that he (Tinubu) was not qualified to have contested that last presidential election.
In his respondent’s brief in the appeal by Atiku and the PDP before the Supreme Court, Tinubu urged that the court dismiss the appeal, and affirm the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PDP) which upheld his election.
Tinubu said he was validly elected having polled the highest number of votes.
Stating that he was validly returned as the winner of the presidential poll by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Tinubu added that by statistics, he garnered one-quarter/25% of the total votes in 29 states of the federation.
He said Atiku and the PDP only managed to secure 25 percent of the total votes in 21 states of the federation, “as against the constitutional requirement of 24.7 states, which is the mathematical results of two-thirds of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT (making 37).”
Tinubu stated that having secured the highest number of valid votes cast and having fulfilled all constitutional requirements in that regard, INEC, had no option but to declare him as the winner of the presidential contest.
He added that Atiku and the PDP, being dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, on March 21, approached the PEPC “on trumped up allegations of non-compliance with provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, corrupt practices, non-scoring of the majority of lawful votes cast at the election and non-qualification of the respondent.”