The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) weekend, raised fresh alarm over the undue delay by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) to release the record of its widely criticized judgment to enable the party and its Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to promptly file an appeal to upturn the judgment at the Supreme Court.
In a statement made available to Business Hilights Abuja Bureau chief, National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan said “Our party and millions of supporters across the country believe that the delay is a calculated attempt by some quarters to frustrate our appeal at the Supreme Court, where Nigerians have expressed confidence to get justice as well as restore the integrity of our judiciary, which has been eroded by the Tribunal.
“It is instructive to state that the Court of Appeal is aware that our party and candidate have mandatory 14 days to appeal to the Supreme Court, yet it is delaying in releasing a judgment that was read for nine hours and which it wants the public to believe it actually wrote.
“Our party fears that this development is lending credence to suspicion in the public space that the judgment is being tampered with and altered, in the name of correcting errors, knowing that there is no way the verdicts can stand the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.
“We also hope there is no link between the circumstances surrounding this delay and the boasts by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, speaking for the Buhari Presidency, as well as the National Chairman of the All Progressives
Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, that justice will not be served to the PDP and our Presidential candidate at the Supreme Court.
Continuing, the National Publicity Secretary recalled that “The PDP had always alerted Nigerians of the relentless efforts by the APC to manipulate processes and we are happy that our party and Nigerians in general, have the full video and audio recording of the judgment and we will not hesitate to expose any underhand act by anybody.”
“The PDP therefore demands the immediate release of the record of judgment as delivered by the Tribunal without any form of alterations,” Ologbondiyan cautioned.
Though there had been an electronic version circulating across the social media over the weekend, the PDP statement may have shown that the one on social media may have been mere transcribed voice records of somebody and not the official CTC released by the PEPT after all.
