By Ishaya Ibrahim
Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, has said that the May 29 inauguration of the President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, won’t stop his sack.
Atiku is challenging the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election on the grounds that the process of his emergence was fraught with several irregularities.
Chris Uche, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and lead counsel to Atiku, said he was confident of reclaiming the mandate of his principal at the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja.
He made the comment after the consolidation of Atiku’s petition alongside the ones filed by the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and the Allied Peoples Movement, on Tuesday.
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According to Uche, the court has the power to sack Tinubu from office even after he had been sworn in.
He said: “I have been asked about May 29, I want to assure people that swearing in is only a ceremony that does not in any way tie the hands of the court. The taking of the oath binds the person who takes the oath and not the court.
“The court has given you its timelines for parties to present their case. We are happy that with the development, the petitions will be expeditiously determined.”
Atiku has asked the court to not only declare him the winner of the presidential election but to also withdraw the Certificate of Return that was issued to Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Meanwhile, the President-elect, Tinubu, had barred his legal team from speaking to journalists throughout the hearing of the petitions.