The ruling party, APC, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s lawyers have filed court papers in response to Atiku Abubakar’s claim that, it is he, not Buhari who won the last Presidential election in Nigeria. He asked the Election Tribunal to either declare him elected or cancel the election entirely and direct INEC to do it again.
In the papers filed before the Tribunal APC and Buhari claim that Mr. Atiku Abubakar is not a Nigerian by birth and therefore was not qualified to contest the election. It also, flowing from this, means that he has no locus standi to query the outcome of the election. It would be interesting to learn something from the lawyers on both sides of the battle line. But whatever is the eventual outcome, we have witnessed before a similar case in our political history, the case of someone, a politician, accused of non-Nigerianness. On January 24, 1980 the ruling party, National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had deported a GNPP leader in Borno State (now Borno/Yobe), Mr Abdulrahman Shugaba Darman, saying that he was a Chadian, not a Nigerian.