PEPC: Tribunal Reserves Judgement in Obi’s Petitions against Tinubu
The Presidential Election Petitions Court (PREPEC), yesterday, reserved judgement in the petition filed by the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu as President.
The five-member panel presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani reserved judgment to a date that will be communicated to parties after parties adopted their final written addresses.
However, at yesterday’s proceedings, the respondents, who adopted their final addresses, first urged the court to dismiss the petitions for lacking in merit, adding that the petitioners failed to prove allegations contained in their petitions.
Obi, who had witnessed almost all the proceedings in his petition, was accompanied by one of Nigeria’s famous writers, Chimamanda Adichie.
Adopting his final address as its brief of argument against the petition, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which conducted the disputed February 25 presidential election, observed that the case of the petitioners was based on the misconception that the Electoral Act, 2022, provided for electronic collation of results.
INEC’s lawyer, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, maintained that collation of results remained manual, adding that the introduction of INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) Portals was to enhance the credibility of the election but that “collation remained manual throughout the election.”
The senior lawyer specifically told the panel, “IReV is simply for public view not part of the collation system.”
Similarly, the electoral umpire argued that the 18,088 blurred results sheets tendered by Obi and LP to prove corrupt practices amounted to nothing because the blurred results did not in any way suggest that the original copies were also blurred “and we do not know why they are blurred.”
Mahmoud noted that while parties agreed that a glitch occurred during the transmission of the results using the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) to the IReV, they disagreed with the petitioners that the glitch was deliberate and aimed at manipulating the process in favour of the second respondent.
Likewise adopting his final address, Tinubu, through his lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, argued along the submission of INEC that the IReV was never a part of the collation process. He submitted that the petitioners did not show how the failure to transmit results real time with the IReV affected the results accrued to the parties.
Like INEC, Tinubu insisted that his failure to score 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) could not invalidate his election. He said even if the court thought otherwise and ordered a rerun, such a rerun could only be between him and Atiku, as the law already barred Obi, on the grounds that he did not come second in the poll.
APC, represented by Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, urged the court to discountenance the evidence of petitioners’ witnesses on the grounds that pleadings were not linked with evidence, and that the petitioners merely dumped documents on the court without anyone speaking to them.
Fagbemi submitted that there was no part of the petition that had not received judicial pronouncement or resolution by the courts, and on the issue of mandatory requirement for the uploading of results through the IReV, he claimed that the Supreme Court, in a judgement, had settled the matter in the case of Oyetola and Adeleke.
Fagbemi further cited other judgements of courts to argue that INEC had discretion to adopt any mode of transmission/transfer of election results.
Speaking to Tinubu’s forfeiture of the sum of $460,000 to the United States of America on account of narcotics trafficking and money laundering, the APC counsel pointed out that the issue was not a ground for disqualification, because the incident occurred over 30 years ago, adding that the country’s constitution provided that in such event the person would be forgiven after 10 years of the alleged offence.
Obi disagreed with the submissions of the respondents in their separate final addresses.
Obi, through his lead counsel, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, observed that the respondents only laboured in vain by trying to degrade the importance of IReV, when the Supreme Court had already settled the fact that IREV was part of the electoral process.
Uzoukwu stated that Tinubu’s sole witness, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, attested to the importance of IReV in the electoral process.
Besides, he claimed that INEC manipulated the election results, which was why it could not produce in court the original of the blurred copies of results sheets it certified for the petitioners.
He argued that there was no glitches as claimed by the respondents.
Uzoukwu therefore submitted that the petitioners have proved their petition particularly in the allegations of non compliance.
