Babatunde Ogala, the Legal Director of the Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council, has denied claims that President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is attempting to avoid being served with court papers regarding the petition filed against his election victory.
Ogala also denied claims that Tinubu left the country to frustrate and delay the election petition tribunal process against his victory.
This comes as he revealed that Tinubu is unable to respond to petitions filed at the election tribunal by the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Atiku Abubakar because he has not been served with a notice.
The barrister had not been served with the petition against him before leaving the country.
The development comes as the LP and PDP camps accuse Tinubu’s camp of purposefully delaying the process by avoiding court papers.
According to the complaint, the election tribunal in Abuja has ordered Obi and Atiku to serve him with copies of petitions seeking to annul his election through alternative channels, specifically through his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Yunusa Tanko, the Chief Spokesman of the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, was quoted by Punch as saying that Tinubu’s recent vacation trip was just another ploy to avoid being served the papers.
He said;
They deliberately frustrated the process. That man (Tinubu) practically ran out of the country after evading being served the notice. But our party will serve him the notice through the APC. I am sure they must have received it by now.
However, Ogala has rubbished such claims, insisting that they have not been served any notice. He added that there is no truth in claims that his principal also left the country to evade being served the notice.
How can we fix a date for that? We will file our response before the time lapses, he said.
Ogala pointed out that Tinubu’s absence would not stall the process as speculated.
That is false. In fact, as of this morning, Tinubu has not been served a copy of the petition. They only obtained an order for substituted service on Friday. So they have to serve him. The earliest they can serve is Monday and he has 21 days from there.
So when you have not served somebody, you cannot expect him to respond. Until we are served the petition copy, that’s when our time will start counting, he said.