According to Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu is a citizen of both Nigeria and Guinea.
In a new court filing to the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja, Atiku also charged Mr. Tinubu with violating the law by failing to disclose information about his constitutional qualifications in his Form EC9 submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Atiku claimed that his identification, including his age, place of origin, and academic credentials, had never been a subject of contention in the response submitted by his primary attorney, Chris Uche, SAN.
He claimed that Mr. Tinubu was unable to run for president under the constitution.
The PDP candidate for president claimed, among other things, that Tinubu was unqualified to lead Nigeria because he had been charged with drug-related crimes in the United States and ordered to forfeit $460,000 as part of a compromise arrangement.
He claims that Mr. Tinubu, who freely accepted the citizenship of the Republic of Guinea, is a dual citizen of Nigeria and Guinea.
The former vice president responded to Mr. Tinubu’s statement that Atiku was a repeat loser of elections by saying that Tinubu was a giant in forfeiture, drug-related offenses, and refusal to disclose dual nationality to INEC.
“The comparison of the second respondent (Tinubu) with the first petitioner ( Atiku) who had attained the eminent position of Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for eight years is totally unfounded,” he said.
According to Atiku, the reason he is contesting Tinubu’s election as president-elect is that he and the APC did not receive a majority of the valid votes cast in the presidential election on February 25.
He said that Mr. Tinubu fell short of some constitutional requirements since he was unable to win 25% of the votes cast in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as required by the law.
According to Atiku, Tinubu opted for irrelevant facts, contradicting, evasive, speculative, and ambiguous remarks rather than directly responding to the petition’s substantive questions.
The awarding of Mr. Tinubu the title of “Ambassador extraordinaire” was apparently verified by Alpha Condé, a former president of Guinea.
He claimed that the honor was a reward for the roles that Mr. Tinubu played in his 2015 election. It is unclear if the status equates to national citizenship.
Following his ouster in a coup in 2021, Mr. Condé, who is currently living in exile in Turkey, made the remarks when Mr. Tinubu’s image and biographical information on the bio-data page of a Guinean passport went viral online.
At around the same time, another widely shared video footage also had Mr. Tinubu, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State, and Ousmane Yara, the ambassador of Guinea to the African Union (AU) for Agenda 2063, riding in a government-owned helicopter.
When Mr. Tinubu visited Guinea’s deposed president in 2016 to commemorate the nation’s independence, Mr. Yara stated to Sun Newspaper that the helicopter video was shot.
(NAN)
