August 01, (THEWILL) – The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja, on Tuesday, reserved judgement in the petition filed by presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, seeking to nullify the victory of President Bola Tinubu’s election.
The five-member panel of the court, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, arrived at the decision on Tuesday, after all the parties adopted their final briefs of argument.
While adopting their final written address, Atiku and the PDP, through their team of lawyers led by Chris Uche (SAN), urged the court to declare that President Tinubu was not qualified to contest the February 25 presidential election.
Alternatively, the Petitioners urged the court to nullify the entire outcome of the presidential election and order a re-run or fresh contest.
Atiku and his party alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), despite receiving over N355 billion for the conduct of the election, deliberately bypassed all the technological innovations it introduced for the purpose of the 2023 general elections.
They contended that INEC acted in breach of the amended Electoral Act when it refused to electronically transmit the results of the presidential election.
However, all the Respondents, including the INEC, President Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC), through their counsels, urged the court to dismiss the petition as grossly lacking in merit.
INEC, through its legal team, led by Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), maintained that the presidential election was not only validly conducted but done in substantial compliance with all the relevant laws.
Also, President Tinubu’s team, led by Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), argued that the petitioners failed to establish why the presidential election should be nullified.
Insisting that he was duly elected with majority of valid votes that were cast during the election, President Tinubu urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s petition.
On its part, the APC, represented by Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), equally prayed the court to dismiss the petition for want of merit.
Also, Obi, in his final written address through his lead counsel, Dr Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), said Tinubu was not qualified to contest the election.
Obi and his party, in their joint petition, want the PEPC to annul Tinubu’s election on the grounds of substantial non-compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, the Electoral Act and guidelines for the conduct of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Dr Uzoukwu (SAN) told the court that the respondents have laboured in vain to degrade and dismiss the importance of I-ReV in an election, adding that the Supreme Court held in the case of Oyetola and INEC that I-ReV is part of an electoral process.
“An election in which 18,088 blurred results are uploaded to INEC portal is a very poor election and that it is not in doubt that Tinubu forfeited the sum of $460,000, being proceeds of narcotics trafficking,” he said.
Lead counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) while adopting the final written address on behalf of his client, said Obi and LP’s petition should be dismissed for lacking in merit.
He told the court that the petitioners failed to show that there was an electronic collation of results in any election in the country, adding that what was in the place of electronic collation was the manual collation system.
On the technical glitch, Mahmoud said the petitioners failed to prove the allegation that the glitch was caused by human interference and that their claim failed since they cannot establish the allegation.
“The glitch that occurred, which affected transmission for about four hours, does not affect the election results,” he said and urged the Court to dismiss the petition for lacking in merit.
Tinubu’s lead counsel, Olanipekun (SAN), said from the results declared, Tinubu scored one-quarter of the two-thirds of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja and added that there is no nexus between the petition, the reliefs and the parties and urged the court to dismiss the petition for “been a jurisprudential fiction.”
Counsel to the APC, Fagbemi (SAN), while adopting the party’s final written address, said even if the court ordered a re-run of the presidential election, Obi is not qualified to participate as it is a horse race between a winner of an election and the person who came second in the election.
Fagbemi said the FCT does not enjoy any special status as far as the presidential election is concerned, explaining that a candidate does not need to score 25 percent of votes cast in the FCT for him to be declared winner of a presidential election.
After the court had listened to all the parties, Justice Tsammani-led panel adjourned the matter for judgement.
The court said it would communicate the judgement date to all the parties.
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