Tinubu Presidential Legal Team Denies Writing Presidential Election Petition Judgment
The legal team which represented President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has refuted the claims from certain quarters that the judgment read by the PEPC on Wednesday was prepared by Tinubu’s legal team.
The judgment of the tribunal, which became publicly available on Friday, had the inscription ‘Tinubu Presidential Legal Team (TPLT)’ on the header of each page of the document. This led to insinuations in some quarters that the judgment was written for and handed over to the judges of the tribunal by Tinubu’s legal team.
Refuting the claims on Saturday, the coordinator of the TPLT, Mr. Babatunde Ogala SAN described the inscription on the judgment in circulation as ‘innocuous’ and noted that it was simply done to identify the document before it was distributed to a larger team of lawyers.
His full statement, obtained by LAWYARD, is reproduced below:
“Following some mischievous insinuations being made in certain quarters regarding the innocuous water-mark of copies of the consolidated judgment of the Court of Appeal with the inscription -“Tinubu Presidential Legal Team ‘TPLT’”, it has become necessary to offer this clarification.
“After the delivery of judgment in the 3 (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 judgment and paid the prescribed fee. Lawyers for PDP were present at the registry at the same time to collect the same judgment.
“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 water-marked with the inscription – “Tinubu Presidential Legal Team ‘TPLT’” before circulating the scanned soft copies to the lawyers in our team.
“The certified true copies issued to us and other parties in the petitions by the registry do not contain the said inscription and any insinuation to the contrary is untrue.
“Counsel to 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 judgment as we have.”
