October 26 (THEWILL) – The Supreme Court, on Thursday, dismissed the two appeals filed separately by former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, challenging the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
A seven-member panel of Justices, led by Inyang Okoro, found the two appeals to be lacking in merit, and upheld the September 6 judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), which affirmed President Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), winner of the 2023 Presidential Poll.
The court further held that parties to the appeal shall bear their different cost.
The judgement, which was unanimously consented to by the other six members of the panel, including Justice Helen Ogunwumiju, Justice Ibrahim Saulawa, Justice Adamu Jauro, Justice Tijani Abubakar, Justice Emmanuel Agim and Justice Lawal Garba, came just three days after the parties took arguments on the appeal on Monday, October 23.
THEWILL reports that Atiku and Obi had prayed the apex court to void the September 6 judgement of the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the PEPC.
While Atiku, through his team of 67 lawyers comprising 18 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), led by Chief Chris Uche, filed 35 grounds of appeal to challenge Tinubu’s victory. Obi, through his own team of lawyers, led by Dr Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), filed 51 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court.
Both Atiku, who came second in the February 25 Presidential poll and Obi, who came third, had contended that the verdict of the PEPC was not only “against the weight of evidence”, but occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice against them.
They had in their separate appeal insisted that the PEPC panel erred in law, when it failed to nullify the presidential election on the grounds of non-compliance with the Electoral Act, 2022, even when evidence showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), acted in breach of extant laws and regulations guiding the conduct of elections.
In their separate appeals, Atiku and Obi accused the PEPC of reaching its unanimous decision based on gross misconstruction and misrepresentation of provisions of both the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and the Electoral Act, 2022.
They argued that section 64(4) & (5) of the Electoral Act, as well as INEC’s Regulations & Guidelines for the conduct of the election, which he tendered in evidence, made mandatory, the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines for electronic transmission of results of the election directly from the polling units to INEC’s collation system for the verification, confirmation and collation of results before announcement.
The appellants also prayed the Supreme Court to among other things, hold that Tinubu was not duly elected by majority of lawful votes cast in the election and also declare that he was not qualified to be declared the winner.
Atiku had further contended in a fresh deposition before the apex court that President Tinubu was not qualified to contest the 2023 election,. He had alleged that the Chicago State University (CSU) diploma certificate that the President submitted to INEC was forged.
THEWILL earlier reported that the apex court had in a judgment read by Justice Okoro, dismissed the request by Atiku for fresh deposition of the CSU documents.
Ruling on the substantive appeal, all the justices upheld the judgment of the PEPC and affirmed President Tinubu duly elected.
On the issue of electronic transmission of results, the apex court held that the non-transmission of the presidential poll results by the first respondent (INEC) did not affect the outcome of the election and could not warrant the nullification of the result of the poll.
While the court dismissed the issue of the 25 percent requirement for Abuja, as a none issue, it further held that parties to the appeal shall bear their different cost.
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