Presidential Election Tribunal Sets September 16, 2023, as Judgment Date for Cases Against Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar.
In a significant development, the Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has officially announced that the much-awaited judgments for two high-profile cases will be delivered on September 16, 2023. The cases involve former Vice President Peter Obi and the Labour Party’s challenge against Bola Tinubu, INEC, Shettima, and APC. Additionally, the same date has been earmarked for the verdict on the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) case, where Atiku Abubakar has contested against APC, INEC, and Tinubu.
The announcement confirms speculation surrounding the judgment date, with a user who shared the update on the microblogging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, indicating a correct prediction of the tribunal’s decision to opt for the last day within the stipulated 180-day period.
While Ejes Gist Newspaper is unable to independently verify the authenticity of this news update, it is established that the Presidential Election Tribunal is bound by the deadline of September 16, 2023, to deliver judgments on the suits filed by key political figures. Atiku Abubakar, representing the PDP, Peter Obi from the Labour Party, and the All Progressives Movement (APM) are the plaintiffs in these cases, all contesting Bola Tinubu’s victory.
As the entire world awaits the judgment of three critical petitions launched by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP), and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), along with their presidential candidates, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Peter Obi, and the Delta-born Princess Chichi Ojei, respectively, against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25, 2023
According to the constitution, the tribunal has until September 16, 2023, or about three weeks from now, to render its decision in the cases. As time passes, the high-profile cases continue to captivate public attention, with all manners of allegations of malpractice flying from all sides against all parties, fueling a series of misinformation and disinformation in both social and traditional media against virtually all of the contenders, including the judiciary, which has the final say in the cases.
Background
At about 4 a.m. on March 1, 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu the winner of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, on the grounds that his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), received the most votes cast and that he received not less than one-quarter of the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as required by law.
Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes, or 36.61% of the total votes cast in the election, according to the results announced on March 1, 2023. Atiku, who finished second, received 6,984,520 votes, accounting for 29.07% of all votes cast, while Obi received 6,101,533 votes, accounting for 25.40% of all votes cast during the disputed election. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes, or 6.40% of the vote. Princess Chichi Ojei, the election’s only female presidential candidate, received only 25,961 votes, placing her outside the top four.
September 16 Deadline
However, within 21 days of INEC’s announcement of the results, five political parties and their presidential candidates approached the Presidential Election Petition Court’s registry to challenge the election outcome.
According to the electoral law, political parties and candidates must file their petition at the Appeal Court registry within 21 days of INEC announcing the results.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party with its candidate, Peter Obi, were among the aggrieved parties that met the deadline.
The rest were the Action Alliance (AA), which had Solomon Okangbuan as its presidential candidate, the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), which had Chichi Ojei as its presidential candidate, and the Action Alliance, which had Major Hamza Al-Mustapha as its presidential candidate.
The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, of Plateau State (North Central), used her constitutional powers to appoint a five-member panel of the court to hear all petitions challenging Tinubu’s presidential election victory, while the tribunal was inaugurated on November 7, 2022, by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola.
The members of the tribunal are Justice Haruna Tsammani (Chairman) of Gombe, North East Nigeria, Justice Stephen Jonah Adah of Kogi, North Central Nigeria, Justice Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf of Oyo, South West Nigeria, Justice Boloukuoromo Ugoh of Bayelsa, South South Nigeria, and Justice Abba Mohammed of Kano, North-West Nigeria.
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The five-member Presidential Election Petition Tribunal convened at the Court of Appeal complex in Abuja on May 8, 2023.
However, less than a week after the tribunal’s proceedings began, two of the aggrieved political parties withdrew their petitions.
The affected political parties were the Action Alliance (AA), which ran a presidential candidate named Solomon Okangbuan, and the Action Alliance, which ran a presidential candidate named Major Hamza Al-Mustapha.
The remaining three, however, have vowed to press on with their separate cases against Tinubu.
Volatile blend
According to the Sunday Vanguard, the subsequent court sessions have been a volatile mix of passionate debates, emotional displays, and desperate attempts by opposing parties to sway the outcome in their favour.
In summary, all of the petitioners asked the tribunal to rule that Tinubu was not duly elected by a majority of the lawfully cast ballots.
They also asked the court to order the INEC to retrieve the certificate of return issued to the APC candidate and issue a new one, while Tinubu, the APC, and the INEC pleaded with the court not to overturn the election results as they had been announced.
What is the case of Ojei against Tinubu
Ojei and her political platform, the APM, have petitioned the tribunal to annul Tinubu’s election on the grounds that the APC did not properly sponsor him (Tinubu) for fielding Mr Kashim Shettima as his vice presidential candidate without withdrawing his earlier nomination as a senatorial candidate.
Shettima was nominated by the APC as a candidate for Borno Central Senatorial District and later as Vice Presidential candidate following the withdrawal of one Kabiru Masari, who was Tinubu’s initial Vice Presidential candidate.
As a result, Ojei and her political party claimed that Shettima and the APC violated the Electoral Act by engaging in the alleged double nomination.
Grievances
The case was heard with the parties allowed to air their grievances.
However, during the July 14, 2023 proceedings in which final addresses were adopted, APM, through its counsel, Andrew Malgwu, SAN, asked the court to invoke relevant laws to nullify Tinubu and Shettima’s nomination on the grounds of unlawful, illegal, and unjustifiable nomination.
However, the INEC asked the Court to dismiss the petition because it lacked merit.
The APC, represented by Lateef Olasunkanmi Fagbemi SAN, now the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), requested that the petition be dismissed on all grounds because it was frivolous, irritating, and unwarranted.
Fagbemi contended that the petition died on arrival due to the Supreme Court’s decision that other political parties could not interfere in the internal affairs of another party, particularly on the issue of nomination.
Similarly, Tinubu and Shettima, represented by legal luminary Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN, argued that the APM’s petition should not have been filed in the first place and demanded that it be dismissed outright.
Olanipekun told the tribunal that the petition should have been withdrawn honourably immediately after the Supreme Court ruled that no party has the right to interfere with how another party nominates candidates for elective offices.
The tribunal’s Chairman, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, later adjourned judgement in the matter indefinitely, adding that the court would notify them when the judgement was ready.
What is Peter Obi’s case against Tinubu?
Obi and his political platform, the Labour Party (LP), also asked the tribunal to declare President Bola Hammed Tinubu’s election invalid.
Before closing their case on June 23, 2023, the petitioners called 13 witnesses.
The petitioners argued in their final written address, dated July 20, 2023, that Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima were not qualified to run in the election.
They argued that Tinubu was “fined $460,000 for an offence involving dishonesty, namely narcotics trafficking imposed by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in case No:93C 44833 between the United States of America and Tinubu in the same election year while his running mate, Shettima, was the APC’s candidate for Borno Central senatorial district and vice-presidential candidate for Nigeria.”
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They also claimed Tinubu did not receive a majority of the lawful votes cast in the election, nor did he receive one-quarter of the lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as required by law.
The petitioners also claimed that the election was conducted in significant violation of the law.
They also claimed Tinubu “was not duly elected by a majority of the lawfully cast votes at the time of the election.”
As a result, the LP candidate and his party urged the court to either declare him the president-elect, believing that he received the majority of lawful votes during the election, or to nullify the entire election and order a new election.
Furthermore, they urged the court to rule that Tinubu was not qualified to run in the election at the time.
Obi also presented five prayers in court. Three of them are alternatives to the two main prayers.
In his two main prayers, he urged the court to rule Tinubu and Shettima ineligible to run in the presidential election on February 25.
In the second main prayer, the LP candidate asked the court to declare Tinubu’s victory null and void because he did not receive one-quarter of the lawful votes cast in the FCT.
However, during the adoption of final written addresses on August 1, 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) legal team, led by Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, asked the court to dismiss the petition for lack of merit.
Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), counsel to Tinubu and Shettima, and Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), representative of the APC, also requested that the petitioners’ case be dismissed.
As a result, the five-member panel of justices led by Harunna Tsammani reserved judgement, adding that a date would be communicated to the parties.
What is Atiku’s case against Tinubu?
In his petition, Atiku asks the tribunal to declare Tinubu’s election invalid because the poll was not conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Electoral Act of 2022.
The petitioner claims that in order for any of the candidates in the February 25, 2023 election to be declared the winner, he or she must receive 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and that Tinubu’s alleged failure to meet the said constitutional requirement invalidated his election.
During the last national elections, the electoral commission used Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines to accredit voters and upload photographic images of results sheets to the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal.
However, the petitioner argued that, while Prof. Yakubu had repeatedly assured the public that the February 2023 general election would be the best ever, with the guaranteed use of the Bi-Modal Voters’ Accreditation System (BVAS) and real-time and direct uploading of polling unit results to the commission’s electronic collation system and Results Viewing Portal (IReV), the bypass and non-use of the BVAS machines in the transmission of the accreditation
Atiku is also using the margin of lead principle to argue that INEC’s hasty declaration of Tinubu as the presidential election winner is unconstitutional and devoid of due process.
When the margin of victory between the winner and runner-up is less than the total number of voters affected by cancellations in their various polling units, the election is declared inconclusive and a re-run is scheduled.
However, when the final written addresses of the parties in the case were adopted on August 1, 2023, Atiku’s lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, prayed the court to overturn Mr Tinubu’s victory and declare Atiku Nigeria’s president.
He reiterated that the electoral umpire’s use of technology during the election “was to improve transparency of results collation, where fraud frequently occurs.”
He stated that during the court hearing, INEC claimed that it was unable to upload presidential election results from polling units due to a glitch on the IReV portal.
Mr Uche, on the other hand, claimed that during the presidential election on February 25, “there was a deliberate bypass of technology to create room for manipulation of results.”
He testified in court that “INEC used technology in the conduct of the election.” As a result, the onus is on INEC to explain” what happened during the elections.
“The shutdown (of the IReV) was nationwide, which allowed INEC to manipulate votes in favour of Tinubu,” Mr Uche argued.
Substantial justice
Mr. Uche urged the court to disregard Mr. Tinubu and the other respondents’ arguments, saying, “We urge your Lordships to do substantial justice and grant all the reliefs of the petitioners which we have clearly proved with evidence, while the respondents have refused to call witnesses in aid of their case.”
However, INEC’s lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud, urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s suit for lack of merit, defending its declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the March 25, 2023 presidential election.
In his closing argument, Mahmoud told the court that Atiku had failed to meet the legal burden of proving his allegations about the election’s conduct.
He claimed that Atiku’s case was based on alleged “non-compliance with the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines and regulations” that the petitioner failed to substantiate.
Contrary to Atiku’s claim, the deployment of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines and INEC Results Viewing (IReV) for the presidential election was successful, according to the electoral umpire’s lawyer.
“The evidence (presented in court) demonstrated that these innovations in accreditation and authentication were successful.”
“The data generated by BVAS was stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS).” The evidence presented in court demonstrated that AWS is the most secure and reliable Amazon service in the world,” Mahmoud argued in response to Atiku’s claim that INEC compromised the IReV portal in favour of Mr Tinubu.
Responding to the court’s inquiry about electronic transmission of results and uploading of results on IReV, Mahmoud, SAN, explained that Atiku and the PDP devised an electronic collation system in their minds.
Unfortunately, he stated, “the evidence does not support that.” There is nothing like that. “On election day, the glitch that disrupted the real-time upload (of presidential election results from polling units) lasted only 4 hours 50 minutes.”
“The second point of contention is that this glitch was created by human intervention.” However, Atiku failed miserably in establishing that there was human interference.
“The evidence before the court clearly showed that the election went well, smoothly at the polling units, and the results were well collated,” Mahmoud added.
On the statutory requirement of 25% voting in Abuja, Mahmoud said the argument was illogical because it contradicted the express provisions of the Constitution.
“The FCT must be treated like a state.” “We submit that the case for noncompliance has not been made, and the FCT argument must fall on its face,” the lawyer argued, requesting that the court dismiss the petition.
Inability to prove case?
Tinubu’s lead lawyer, Olanipekun, also defended his emergence, claiming that Atiku had abandoned his petition due to his inability to prove his case.
He told the court that instead of proving his allegations, Atiku resorted to attacking Tinubu’s person.
“The court cannot grant the petitioners what they have not specifically requested in their final written address.” Atiku, in my opinion, is a meddling interloper.
“We urge your Lordships to dismiss this petition,” Olanipekun said, adding that Atiku simply threw electoral documents in front of the court without proving his case against Mr Tinubu.
According to the SAN, Atiku received only one-quarter of the two-thirds of votes required by the constitution in Abuja.
On the manual collation of presidential election results, he contended that the method used did not undermine the electoral process’s credibility.
“Uploading results to IReV, whether manually or electronically, has no effect on the collation of results; it does not add or subtract votes.” “Collection is a physical and manual process,” Olanipekun explained.
He stated that a recent judgement of the Court of Appeal in Lagos affirmed INEC’s discretion to use any methodology in the transmission of results.
The APC, for its part, urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s petition because it was devoid of substance.
Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), an APC lawyer who is now the AGF, stated that Atiku’s witnesses did not dispute the figures (results) provided by INEC.
“No one presented any alternative figures of results to counter INEC’s declaration.”
On the issue of 25% votes in the FCT, Fagbemi argued that following Atiku’s logic would give FCT voters an unfair advantage over the majority of Nigerians.
He asked the court to uphold Tinubu’s victory and dismiss Atiku’s petition as meritless.
The tribunal, which serves as the court of first instance in the high-profile case, has until September 16, 2023 to issue its decision.
However, regardless of the outcome of the judgement, all of the petitioners have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court.
