Election Tribunal: ‘How Aides, Lawyers Scammed Atiku’ – Lauretta Onochie

Developments at the 2019 presidential election tribunal indicates that Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been scammed, an aide to President Muhammadu Buhari has said.

Mr Abubakar, a former vice president, was the major challenger to Mr Buhari who sought re-election on the platform of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).

Popularly known as Atiku, the opposition candidate is at the election tribunal praying he be declared winner of the February 23 exercise wherein the president was declared re-elected by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The petitioner and his party are claiming to have won the election based on results allegedly obtained from the servers of the electoral body, despite the commission’s claim of not possessing any computer database, let alone transmitting results electronically during the general election.

While some of the petitioners’ witnesses who claimed to have served as officials of INEC during the election said they transmitted results of the exercise electronically, others could not give the correct date when the election held.

A cross section of the witnesses, testifying against Buhari, APC and INEC who are respondents to the petition, said they were seeing statements allegedly from them for the first time at the tribunal.

While Atiku and the PDP has upto July 17 to prove their case, some of their witnesses from Zamfara State journeying their way to the tribunal sitting in Abuja were reportedly attacked by unknown gunmen.

For Lauretta Onochie, the president’s media aide, aforementioned events so far suggest that aides and legal counsels of the PDP candidate are hell bent on swindling funds out of their client.

“Some of @atiku’s witnesses were “attacked” in Zamfara on their way to the Election Tribunal.Some witnesses can’t remember d date of d presidential election. Others saw their statements for the 1st time in court.Atiku allowed himself to be scammed by opportunistic aides & lawyers,” Ms Onochie who just turned 60 said in a tweet on Friday evening.

The presidential aide who accused the former vice president of shopping for terrorists in a foreign land to make the nation ungovernable for her principal, will be on the defensive side to shake off the N2.5billion filed against her after refusing to publicly apologize and pay N500million as damages.