The All Progressive Congress (APC) has filed a motion at the
Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja that the candidate of the
People’s Democratic Party in the poll, Atiku Abubakar, is not a Nigerian and
therefore not qualified to have stood for the election.
The party in its petition filed by its counsel, Lateef
Fagbemi, claimed that the former Vice President is a Cameroonian and not a
Nigerian citizen and his petition against President Muhammadu Buhari, its own
candidate, should be dismissed for lacking in merit.
In a reply to the petition of Atiku and the PDP praying for
their declaration as the lawful winner of the presidential poll, the APC said
that the 11.1 million votes recorded in favor of the two petitioners should be
voided and considered a waste by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The APC faulted the candidacy of Atiku in the election
insisting that as a Cameroonian, he ought not to have taken part in the
presidential poll of Nigeria in the first instance. According to the APC, Atiku
was born on November 25th 1946, in Jada, Adamawa, in Northern Cameroon and is,
therefore, a citizen of Cameroon and not a Nigerian by birth.
The party also claimed that prior to 1919, Cameroon was
being administered by Germany and that following the defeat of Germany in World
War 1, which ended in 1918, Cameroon became part of a League of Nations mandate
territory which consisted of French Cameroon and British Cameroon in 1919.
APC further argued that in 1961, a plebiscite was held in
British Cameroon to determine whether the people preferred to stay in Cameroon
or align with Nigeria.
According to the party, while Northern Cameroon preferred a
union with Nigeria, Southern Cameroon chose alignment with the mother country
and that it was as a result of the plebiscite that Northern Cameroon, which
included Adamawa, became a part of Nigeria.
APC, therefore, said that contrary to the assertion of Atiku
in his petition, he (Atiku) had no right to be voted for as a candidate in the
election to the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria held on February
23, 2019.
The party went on to state that by reason of Atiku not
having qualified to contest the election, all votes purportedly cast for him
and the PDP in the February 23rd election are wasted votes.
Meanwhile, no date has been fixed for the hearing of the
petition.
