President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday opened his defence in the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the February 23 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
The PDP and its candidate are challenging the declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Buhari as the winner of the election.
The petitioners listed INEC, Buhari and the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) as first, second and third respondents respectively.
The petitioners on July 19 closed their case after calling 62 witnesses and tendering several documents as evidence before the tribunal.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Buhari’s counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, informed the tribunal that they had some documents which consist of newspaper publications, receipts and certified true copies of WAEC certificate, to be admitted as exhibits.
The petitioner’s counsel, Levy Uzoukwu, objected to the admissibility of the documents and reserved reasons to the objection till the final address stage.
But INEC and the APC counsel did not object to the admissibility of the documents.
Prior to this, the tribunal chairman, Mohammed Garba tendered the documents to be marked as exhibit R1 to 18 and exhibit R19 to 26 respectively.
Shortly after all the documents were tendered, Mr Olanipekun called his first witness, a retired general of the Nigerian Army, Paul Tarfa, who said he joined the army with Buhari on April 16, 1962.
The PDP and Abubakar are challenging Buhari’s re-election on many grounds. They allege that the results of the election as announced by INEC were doctored and that Buhari lied on oath about the secondary school he claimed to have attended.
Mr Buhari’s educational qualification has become a repeated basis upon which different interested parties challenge his candidacy.
Also, a separate case instituted by three Nigerians challenging Buhari’s educational qualification has reached the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Buhari presented his West African School Examination certificate from Cambridge University to the presidential election tribunal.
He made the submission through his counsel, Olanipekun, and the certificate was admitted as evidence in the matter.
Presenting the certificate, Abba Kyari, a witness Buhari called on Tuesday, told the tribunal that Buhari had five credits including in English in the examination.
Kyari is the president’s chief of staff.
During cross-examination, the counsel representing the Independent National Electoral Commission, Yunus Usman, asked Kyari if he knew of Buhari having five credits in WASCEE.
Kyari also told the tribunal that no certificate was listed on the president’s curriculum vitae and that none was among the documents obtained from Cambridge University earlier tendered as exhibits.
He said he obtained the Cambridge documents personally on July 18, 2019.
The Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate, Abubakar, had filed the petition before the tribunal to challenge the victory of Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 23, 2019 poll.
Amongst the grounds of the petition was that Buhari did not possess the academic qualification necessary to contest the poll.
Also under cross-examination by the petitioners’ lawyer, Kyari said he was 67 years old and that he had known the second respondent for nearly 40 years.
Kyari also said he signed for and collected the Cambridge documents for the assessment by Cambridge.
He also confirmed that the curriculum vitae signed by Buhari did not have any certificate listed, apart from the list of institutions attended by the President.
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