Tinubu submits 17 exhibits to the presidential tribunal to support his election victory.

President Bola Tinubu presented 17 sets of exhibits in support of his eligibility to run in the February 25 presidential election on Tuesday.

Through a group of attorneys led by Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, Tinubu, who insisted he was the legitimate winner of the presidential election, submitted certified copies of bundles of documentary evidence to the Presidential Election Petition Court, or PEPC, in Abuja.

He presented the proof in support of the petition PDP candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar filed to have his election victory declared invalid.

A letter dated February 3, 2003, from the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to the Consul General of the American Embassy in Nigeria, requesting his criminal history, was one of the exhibits President Tinubu presented to the court.

In addition, the US Embassy informed the NPF in a response that there was no criminal case against him as of February 4, 2003.

Along with his travel logs from 2012 to 2021, which the Nigerian Immigration Service certified on July 3, 2023, President Tinubu also presented a bundle of documents in court on Tuesday, including the report of the Committee on the Location of the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT.

In addition, President Tinubu submitted Forms EC8A from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which represented the voting results for the presidential election in Kano State, as well as Forms EC8D(A), which are a summary of the voting results from every state in the union.

Also admitted in evidence by the court was the certified true copy of an Originating Summons marked: SC/CV/354/2023, which the Attorneys-General of six PDP controlled states- Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Sokoto- filed at the Supreme Court on February 28 to void the outcome of the presidential election.

Certified copies of six newspaper publications were the last piece of evidence the president presented to prove his election victory.

While Atiku and the PDP vehemently contested the admissibility of all the exhibits, INEC and the All Progressives Congress, APC, through their respective legal teams led by Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, and Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, did not object to the submission of all the documents.

The petitioners stated that in their final written response, they will provide the justifications for their reservations.

In the meanwhile, despite the objection, the five-member court panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani accepted all of the documents into evidence and designated them as Exhibits RA 1 to RA 17.

You may recall that on March 1, INEC declared Tinubu of the ruling APC the winner of the presidential election, beating out 17 other contenders who ran for the position.