On Tuesday, four presidential candidates in the just concluded election filed separate cases with the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja asking that the election that produced Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as the winner of the presidential election of February 25 be overturned.
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, Solomon Okangbuan of the Action Alliance, and Chichi Ojei of the Allied People’s Movement are among the petitioners who want Tinubu’s election as president-elect to be thrown out.
With 6,984,520 votes, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party came in second, and Obi took third with 6,101,533.
Respondents to the petition filed by Obi and LP were INEC, Tinubu, Shettima Kashim, his running mate.
Obi asserted that 11 states had been rigged, and he promised to prove it in the declaration of results based on the uploaded results.
“The petitioners shall show that in the computation and declaration of the result of the election, based on the updated results, the votes recorded for the second respondent (Tinubu) did not comply with the legitimate process for the computation of the result and disfavor the petitioners in the following states: Rivers, Lagos, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Imo, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Plateau, and other states of the federation,” the petition stated.
Despite the fact that at the time of the announcement, all of the polling unit results had not yet been fully scanned, uploaded, and transferred electronically as required by the Electoral Act, Obi and LP claimed INEC broke its own rules when it published the outcome.
The petitioners asked the tribunal to “determine that the second and third respondents (Tinubu and Shettima) were not qualified to contest the presidential election held on February 25, 2023,” among other things.
“That it be decided that, due to the second and third respondents’ ineligibility, every vote cast for the second respondent in the election was wasted.
“That it be decided that, based on the remaining votes (after discounting the votes credited to the second respondent), the first petitioner (Obi) scored a majority of the legal votes cast at the election and had not less than 25% of the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential election
“That it be found that the second respondent (Tinubu) was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the presidential election in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The tribunal has not yet set a time for the petition’s hearing, which was submitted by Livy Ozoukwu, the petitioners’ primary attorney.
The petition filed by Atiku and the PDP was designated CA/PEPC/05/2023, and respondents INEC, Tinubu, and the APC were mentioned.The petition’s submission was verified by Silas Onu of Atiku’s legal team to Channels TV on Tuesday.
In essence, the petition calls for the annulment of Tinubu’s victory.
Rotimi Oyekanmi, the INEC’s chief press secretary, declined to comment on the allegations made by political parties when reached for comment on Tuesday.Festus Keyamo, the head of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, also said that because the issue is in court, his boss would not be required to provide the LP candidate an official response.
The APC PCC has no response to the petition, according to Keyamo. At my level in the profession and for those of us who understand what it means to uphold the law, the debate now formally transfers to court because the case has been filed in court.
In the meantime, other applications have also been filed before the court by the Action Alliance and Solomon Okangbuan, who is running for president, and the Allied People’s Movement and Princess Chichi Ojei, who is running for president.
Okangbuan and Ojei, respectively, are contesting the results of the presidential election in the lawsuits with the case numbers CA/PEPC/03/2023 and CA/PEPC/04/2023 on the grounds of alleged material non-compliance with the electoral laws and INEC guidelines.
The AA argued that because its candidate was disqualified, the election should be declared invalid.For its part, the APM asserted that due to the requirements of sections 131(c) and 142 of the Constitution and section 35 of the Electoral Act 2022, Tinubu was not eligible to run in the election at the time of the election.
