By Shola Abayomi.
The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal will resume sitting on the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, on Monday.
The new development suggests the likelihood of a new judge being appointed to replace the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa on the five-man panel to hear the case.
Recall that Justice Bulkachuwa withdrew her membership of the five-man panel on May 22, in the wake of allegation of the likelihood of bias levelled against her by the PDP and Atiku Abubakar.
The tribunal is believed to have served the notice for the Monday’s hearing, as the lead counsel of the PDP and Atiku’s legal team, Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), confirmed the development yesterday.
He said, “We were served the notice today that the court will resume hearing on Monday.”
He further revealed he was unaware of Bulkachuwa’s replacement.
“It is the presumption that we arrived at when we received the hearing notice on Friday. But we do not have any information about it”, he said.
Atiku and the PDP had written to Bulkachuwa a week ago, reminding her of her pledge to appoint her replacement on the panel to enable resumption of the hearing of their petition.