Tribunal Dismisses Atiku’s Petition against Tinubu’s Election
The Presidential Election Petition Court has dismissed the petition filed by candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP,) Abubakar Atiku challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.
Just like the case of Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party, the five-member panel of the election court held that Atiku failed to prove the allegations contained in his petition against the February 25 presidential election.
Atiku and PDP had premised their joint petition on alleged irregularities, corrupt practices and substantial non-compliance with the electoral laws.
In addition, they submitted that Tinubu was not qualified to participate in the poll on the grounds of alleged offences bordering on forfeiture of $460, 000, forgery, dual citizenship amongst others.
But, in the lead judgment delivered by the presiding judge, Justice Haruna Tsammani, the tribunal noted that for any election to be nullified there must be prove of substantial non-compliance, corrupt practices and other irregularities.
The tribunal observed that while the petitioners failed to give particulars of malpractices in their petition, the evidence of the few witnesses called cannot be relied upon having not witnessed alleged acts of irregularities or corrupt practices.
Recall that Atiku had called only 27 witnesses to prove his allegations of irregularities, corrupt practices amongst others.
It was the position of the court that the 27 witnesses called was inadequate considering the fact that elections took place in over 176,000 polling units across the country, to which the petitioners claimed their agents monitored.
The tribunal observed that rather than call these polling units agents who witnessed the alleged irregularities and corrupt practices, the petitioners called collation agents whose evidence were at best “hearsay”.
On the issue of electronic transmission the panel reiterated its earlier position that the Electoral Act did not make provisions for electronic transmission of election results, adding that IReV is not a part of the collation process.
On the issue of qualification, the court held that the petitioners did not plead facts in the qualification and disqualification of Tinubu, hence the issue was discountenanced by the court.
Earlier, the tribunal in a ruling struck out several paragraphs relied upon by Atiku and PDP in seeking the nullification of Tinubu’s election.
Besides, several exhibits including witnesses statements tendered to establish allegations of irregularities, malpractices against the February 25 presidential election were rejected and discontenanced by the tribunal.
It was the position of the court that several facts fundamentally required to support the petition were not provided by Atiku.
Among others, Atiku was said to have failed and neglected to name places where ballot boxes were snatched, the ways and manners the BVAS machine were manipulated and names of polling boots where alleged malpractices took place.
The petitioner who claimed to have polled majority of lawful votes was said to have failed to state in clear terms, the total lawful votes he claimed to have scored.
The Court held that Atiku alleged that Tinubu did not score majority of lawful votes but refused to make the perceived lawful votes known in his petition to the Tribunal.
Similarly, the Tribunal said that the former Vice President made grievous allegations against Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello and Chairman of Olamaboro Local Government of Kogi, Friday Adejoh but neglected to join them as respondents in the petition.
It was the position of the tribunal that failure to join the governor who was accused of electoral fraud was fatal to the petition because the governor was denied opportunity to defend himself as required by law.
The Tribunal dismissed the allegations of over voting all over Nigeria by the petitioner adding that such pleadings run foul of the law because the specific places where the alleged over voting took place were not mentioned.
