September 10, 2023 NewsOrient

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has, through his lawyers, explained why copies of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal’s Judgement have inscription of Tinubu’s team at the corner of the pages.

He said the inscription, which sparked off heated controversy, was made with water paint after Tinubu team got the Certified True Copy of the judgement from the Court Register.

It is on record that since Wednesday, September 6, when PEPT upheld that President Bola Tinubu won the 2023 General Election, critics have expressed dismay over inscription of Tinubu’s team’s name on the Tribunal’s Judgement.

The statement from Tinubu’s lawyers reads in part: “After the delivery of judgement in the three election petitions by the Court of Appeal on September 6, 2023, the Court directed its registry to make physical copies of same available on September 7, 2023.

“Accordingly, the Tinubu Presidential Legal Team applied for a Certified True Copy of the said judgement and paid the prescribed fee.

“In fact, the representative of the PDP collected the first copy that was made available by the registry.

On collecting our own copy, we immediately scanned and watermarked it with the inscription “Tinubu Presidential Legal Team ‘TPLT’” before circulating the scanned soft copies to the lawyers in our team.

“The Certified True Copy issued to us and other parties in the petitions by the registry does not contain the said inscription, and any insinuation to the contrary is untrue.

“Counsel for the petitioners will also appreciate the fact that the insinuations being circulated in some quarters are untrue, unkind, unfair, and unfortunate, as they have the same certified copies of the judgement as we have.”

It would be recalled that after the verdict, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi rejected the judgement and headed to the Supreme Court to reclaim their mandates.

NewsOrient