Legal Fireworks As Tribunal Reserves Judgement In Atiku, Obi’s Petitions Against Tinubu

*I scored 25 percent in above half of FCT — Tinubu
*Petitioners couldn’t prove claim on electronic collation of results — INEC
*IREV part of the electoral process, N355bn spent on it — Atiku, Obi

The Presidential Election Petitions Court has reserved judgment in the separate petitions challenging the result of the February 25 presidential election.

There were intensive arguments for and against the reliefs sought before the court in the petitions, which final addresses were adopted on Tuesday.

The petitions are those of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).

A five-member panel of justices led by Justice Haruna Tsammani informed them that the date for the judgment will be communicated to them.

INEC had on March 1 declared Tinubu winner of the election with 8,794,726, Atiku came second with 6,984,520; Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.

Sustain my victory; I scored 25 percent in above half of FCT – Tinubu

Atiku and Obi had contended that the provision in Section 134(2) of the Nigerian Constitution provides that a candidate must score at least 25 percent of the votes cast in two-thirds of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT, which only Obi polled.

At the hearing, President Bola Tinubu told the court that he scored 25 percent of the votes in more than half of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The submission was made by counsel to Tinubu, Wole Olanipekun (SAN) while adopting his objections and final written address against Atiku’s petition.

He said the recurring word under Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, is “votes”, adding that a similar interpretation was also applied in Shagari vs Awolowo in 1979, maintaining that Tinubu’s total votes reflects 25 percent of the two-thirds of the votes cast in the FCT.

Olanipekun said for the purposes of the election, the FCT is regarded as the 37th state of the federation.

He said Atiku failed to show the results, which ought to be declared in his favour, adding that the court cannot grant what was not requested by “meddlesome interlopers.”

Petitioners couldn’t prove claim on electronic collation of results – INEC

Atiku and Obi had contended that the failure to transmit results of the presidential election to IREV directly from polling units and simultaneously with the National Assembly elections constituted substantial non-compliance to the Electoral Act and INEC Guidelines as well as created the avenue for the manipulation of the results.

But in their address, the counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) submitted that the petitioners contrived in their minds that there was a provision for electronic transmission, which doesn’t exist but only manual transmission.

He added that their evidence failed to prove how the non-compliance affected the results of the election.

He said that the glitch suffered in the INEC application on Amazon Web Services (AWS) was not unusual for such a new technology and was not a result of human interference.

He said the 18,088 blurred results by the LP were merely for dramatisation purposes and did not impact the actual results.

He said agreeing with the argument on the requirement of a 25 percent score in the FCT would impose special status on a territory of the country, which would be absurd.

On his part, Olanipekun said uploads are not part of the collation process as they are done physically.

Olanipekun said the judgments of the Federal High Court in Abuja and the Court of Appeal in Lagos have ruled that INEC has the discretion to choose how to collate the results of an election, adding that the judgment is binding on all parties.

Also submitting, counsel to the APC, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) said LP failed to prove non-transmission of results from polling unit by polling unit.

He said in the event of a rerun, it will be between APC and PDP.

“This is why I say that the petition is ambitious; and if they say they are meddlesome interlopers, it is also correct,” he said.

He said the judgment of the US court was not a criminal forfeiture, adding that there was no defendant and accused in the election.

On dual citizenship, Tinubu said he is a citizen of Nigeria by birth as provided under Section 137(1) of the Nigerian Constitution, 1999.

“And on the petitioner’s summary of the evidence, we observe a lack of fidelity to the actual records, which bind parties and the court, all in an apparent attempt to augment evidential paucity and deficit”.

On the $460,000 forfeiture, Olanipekun said Section 137(1)(d) of the Nigerian Constitution provides that Tinubu is not under any fine as provided in the section.

IREV part of electoral process, we spent N355bn on it – Atiku, Obi

But lead counsel to Atiku, Chris Uche (SAN) informed the court that there is no dispute that INEC reserves the discretion to adopt the technology for the conduct of the election, which it chose BVAS and the IREV, which formed part of the new regime of election management in the country to enhance the transparency of collation.

“The burden in the new regime, because INEC was empowered and we gave evidence that it was N355 billion, so it is left for INEC to explain to Nigerians; it was not a technical glitch, it was deliberate for the manipulation of the election,” he said.

He said the substantiality of the non-compliance was nationwide, and not just a polling unit.

Counsel to the LP, Livy Uzoukwu (SAN) submitted that an election in which 18,088 polling units’ results were blurred is a very flawed election.

Of the result sheets certified by INEC for the petitioners, he said “8,123 were blurred, some with pictures and pictures certified by them, and how can they say they conducted an election so far?

“Any certified true copy of any document must be an exact replica, that explains why INEC couldn’t produce the originals of the result sheets because it couldn’t have been any other thing than blank sheets,” he said.