The legal teams representing the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Obi, have disclosed their relentless efforts to meet the 14-day deadline for filing an appeal at the Supreme Court. This follows the recent verdict from the Presidential Elections Petition Court (PEPC).
In a telephone interview with Sunday Punch, the counsels acknowledged the challenges posed by the delay in obtaining the certified true copy (CTC) of the PEPC verdict but assured the public that they were working diligently to meet the strict Supreme Court deadline.
This is coming amidst the controversy surrounding the watermark of President Bola Tinubu’s Legal Team on the viral copy of the CTC.
Obi’s lead counsel told the aforementioned publication that they had lost three days out of the 14-day super court deadline.
He said, “We lost three days out of the 14 days available to us. We are now working very hard to take care of that situation. We would have loved to have had the CTC of the judgment delivered on September 6 latest the following day and would have commenced work immediately but that did not happen. Now we are battling with time constraints.
“Nonetheless, we are working round the clock and harder than we should have done to meet up with the time. I can assure you, we will meet up. What we need to do is to work harder than we would have done.”
Atiku’s legal team has also vowed to meet the 14-day deadline.
His lawyer, Prof. Mike Ozekhome (SAN), said, “is working hard towards meeting the deadline.
“We are already in possession of the CTC and we are identifying the areas where we would base our opinion on. We won’t let our client and Nigerians down.”
Asked how the team intends to beat the deadline, Atiku’s lead counsel, Chris Uche (SAN) said, “We are working round the clock”.