The Presidential Elections Petition Court has ordered President-elect Bola Tinubu to be served copies of the petitions challenging his electoral victory through substituted means.
Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led three-man panel of the court gave the order during a sitting in Abuja on Friday.
The court ordered the president-elect to be served through his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, approached the court in separate ex-parte applications praying to be allowed to serve the petitions on Tinubu through substituted means.
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The challengers informed the court that all efforts to effect personal service of their petitions on President-elect Tinubu proved abortive.
The petitioners said that the President-elect, whose team confirmed is abroad for post-election rest, deliberately made himself elusive with a view to frustrating their effort to hand him copies of the petition as required by the law.
The ex-parte applications for service through substituted means were filed pursuant to Section 6(6a) and 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act, as well as Paragraph 8 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022.
Atiku and Obi further back their ex-parte motions dated March 23, with affidavits of urgency and non-service, even as they persuaded the court to hear the applications, outside the pre-hearing session of their substantive petitions.
While Atiku’s application was moved on Friday by his legal team led by Mr Eyitayo Jegede SAN, that of Obi and LP was moved by Mr. Ikechukwu Ezechukwu SAN.
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