This was a technical judgement by the Tribunal & the Judges must be commended for the effort and hard work that went into this case. To make my comment easier to the layman; I will not comment on all aspects of the case but the salient points to me.

The tribunal rejected all of Atiku’s claims: that the election was marred by irregularities, that he received more votes than Buhari and that the president did not have a secondary school certificate, a basic requirement to contest the election.

On Case Management: First of all, Both PDP & APC made too many useless applications in this case. This led to a bloated legal case that was needlessly time consuming & laborious. The nonsense about Atiku not being Nigerian & INEC saying that Atiku’s lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu is not a legal practitioner called to the Nigerian Bar. These were distractions in my view and the Tribunal gave them short shrift by rightly dismissing these spurious claims. And then the many objections filed by both parties enlarged the volume of work for the case.

It seems politicians throw every charge possible into the ring to see which one will stick. This is not efficient. In Kenya, Presidential Election was conducted in Aug 2017 & their Supreme court gave a final ruling on d election petitions in Sept 2017. That is efficiency.

General Observation: Anyway, let’s get back to Nigeria, Overall the Tribunal verdict seems correct in my view. Let us be open minded about this. The PDP’s failure at the Tribunal is due to a combination of some own goals by the PDP in making some mistakes in its prosecution of this case as well as the limit imposed on the Tribunal by the Constitution & current Electoral Act which meant only manual procedures are valid in law. In my analysis; INEC was edging its bet when it saw that d new Electoral Act was passed by the 8th Senate, which would have allowed electr transmission. But PMB vetoed new Act at d last minute; thus forcing INEC to scrap all its anticipatory electronic procedures that would have been lawful under d proposed Act. This anticipatory preps could have led to confusion about Server or no server.

On the allegations of police and military interference Read more: The PDP also alleged violence by the Police & Military was used to support rigging by the APC. But the PDP failed to join the Police & Military as parties in the suit. Hence, the Police & Military could not defend themselves in court as required by law. PDP’s claimed that as agents of the Govt, security forces acted on its behalf. So the Govt is vicariously liable. But Vicarious Liability is not known to Criminal Law. It applies only to civil wrong.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/09/12/verdict-of-pept-my-observations/

The Unvoiced Part of the Judgement: You supported and brought to power a man without certificate in 2015 against a man with a Ph.D then in 2019 you now contend that the certificate-less man is not qualified.
You cannot aprobate and reprobate at the same time.
Sorry Atiku, though I voted for you, you cannot play a fast one with Buhari's certificate. I that holds then Justice must start from GEJ.