After over five months of rigorous hearing, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja last Wednesday dismissed the three separate petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) alongside their presidential candidates against the declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The 5-man panel headed by Justice Simon Tsamani in a judgement that spanned close to 12 hours dismissed all the petitions for being unmeritorious. using facts and law to ground its verdicts in each of the cases. INEC had on February 25, 2023 conducted the presidential election across the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory.

On March 1, the electoral body declared Tinubu as the winner of the election on the grounds that his party scored the highest votes cast and that he secured not less than one quarter of the votes cast in each of at least twothirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as required by law. In the said results, Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes representing 36.61 per cent of the total votes cast at the election to emerge victorious. Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who came second scored 6,984,520 representing 29.07 per cent of the votes cast, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who came third scored 6,101,533 representing 25.40 per cent of the votes cast. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) came fourth scoring 1,496,687 votes representing 6.40 per cent. Princess Chichi Ojei of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), the only female presidential candidate in the election, polled 25,961 of the 28 million votes cast. Afterwards, three political parties with their presidential candidates approached the registry of the Presidential Election Petition Court to challenge the election outcome within the 21 days window provided by the law.

The aggrieved parties are: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar; Labour Party, with its candidate, Peter Obi; and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) with its presidential candidate, Chichi Ojei. Consequently, the Court of Appeal under its President, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, appointed five judges to hear the petition. They are; Justice Haruna Tsammani (Chairman), Justice Stephen Jonah Adah, Justice Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf, Justice Moses Boloukuoromo Ugoh and Justice Abba Mohammed. The 5-man panel commenced full sitting on May 8 at the Court of Appeal complex in Abuja.

APM’s petition

In its petition, the APM and its candidate, Princess Ojei, prayed the Tribunal to nullify the election of Tinubu on the ground that the APC did not properly sponsor him (Tinubu) by presenting Kashim Shettima as his vice presidential candidate without withdrawing his earlier nomination as a senatorial candidate.

But INEC prayed the court to dismiss the petition for lacking in merit. Similarly, Tinubu’s lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), also argued that the petition ought to have been withdrawn honourably immediately after the Supreme Court made a pronouncement that no party has the right to dabble into how another party nominated its candidates for elective offices. Tribunal’s verdict on APM’s petition In a unanimous judgement, the Tribunal dismissed APM’s petition for lack of jurisdiction and being unmeritorious. According to Justice Haruna Tsammani who read the lead judgement, the APM lacked the ‘locus standi’ to challenge the nomination of the candidates of another political party at the Tribunal. “Disqualification of a candidate on the basis of double nomination is a pre-election matter. Allied Peoples Movement’s (APM) petition is an abuse of court process, having ventilated same issues before a Federal High Court”, the judge held. Labour Party’s petition Peter Obi alongside his party, LP, also prayed the Tribunal to set aside President Bola Tinubu’s election. In their final written address dated July 20, 2023, the petitioners argued that Tinubu and Kashim Shettima were not qualified to contest the poll.

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. The petitioners further argued that Tinubu’s running mate, Shettima, was the APC’s candidate for Borno Central Senatorial District and vice-presidential candidate for the whole of Nigeria in the same election year. They also insisted that Tinubu failed to win the majority of lawful votes cast in the election, just as he could not secure one-quarter of the lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as required by law. Obi therefore prayed the court to either declare him as the president-elect, on ground that he scored majority of the lawful votes cast during the election, or alternatively, nullify the entire election and order a fresh election. But the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) legal team led by Abubakar Mahmoud(SAN) prayed the court to dismiss the petition for want of merit.

Similar request was also made by APC’s lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN). Tribunal’s verdict on Labour Party’s petition Delivering its judgement in the case, the Tribunal held that Obi’s petition was also unmeritorious. Justice Abba Mohammed, who read the judgement in Obi’s case said the Labour Party and its presidential candidate failed to prove that the APC presidential candidate in the election, Bola Tinubu, was not qualified to contest the last presidential election on account of his purported criminal record in the United States. Specifically, the court held that Obi and his party failed to showcase or establish any record of criminal arrest or conviction against Tinubu. The court also maintained that Obi and his party got it wrong to have requested for the invalidation of Tinubu’s election on the account of purported double nomination of Shettima for two political offices. The court held that the petitioners did not have the ‘locus standi’ to raise such issue before the tribunal On the various criminal allegations of malfeasance raised against Tinubu and INEC regarding the conduct of the election, the court said the petitioners failed to prove their cases.

The court also dismissed the Labour Party and Peter Obi’s claim that 25 per cent votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was needed to win the presidential election. The Tribunal held that FCT is like other states of the federation, hence, the residents have no special privileges as the petitioners claimed. The judge ruled that although Obi and LP claimed to have scored the majority of lawful votes cast, they also failed to state the number of lawful votes they scored. The Tribunal, in its overall judgement, dismissed the petition in its entirety. Atiku and PDP’s case In his petition, Atiku prayed the Tribunal to set aside Tinubu’s election on ground of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022. Like Obi, Atiku also argued that for any of the candidates in the February 25, 2023 poll to be declared winner, he or she must score 25 per cent of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The petitioner maintained that the bypass and non-use of the BVAS machines in the transmission of the accreditation data and polling unit results of the election fundamentally and substantially affected the integrity of the results announced by INEC for both Tinubu and his political party— APC and thoroughly discredited the process of the election. Atiku also argued that the margin of lead principle to assert that INEC’s hasty announcement of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential poll is unconstitutional and without due process.

The principle states that when the margin of lead between the winner and the runner-up is less than the total number of voters affected by cancellations in their different polling units, the election is declared inconclusive and a re-run is organised. Adopting his final written address, Atiku’s lawyer, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), prayed the court to set aside Tinubu’s victory and declare Atiku Nigeria’s president.

He reiterated that the deployment of technology during the election by the electoral umpire “was to enhance transparency of results collation, where fraud often takes place.” He further noted that INEC argued during the court hearing that it could not upload results of the presidential election from the polling units due to a glitch that occurred on the IReV portal. However, Uche contended that during the presidential election, “there was a deliberate bypass of the technology to create room for manipulation of results”. He told the court that “INEC deployed technology in the conduct of the election. Therefore, the burden is on INEC to explain what transpired during the polls. “The shutdown (of the IReV) was nationwide and created room for the manipulation of votes” in favour of Tinubu by INEC”, Uche argued. Praying the court to ignore Tinubu and other respondents’ defence, Uche submitted that, “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”. But defending its declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential poll, INEC’s counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud, urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s suit for lacking in merit.

In INEC’s final argument, Mahmoud told the court that Atiku failed to discharge the burden placed on him by law in proving his allegations against the conduct of the election. He contended that Atiku’s case centred on alleged “non-compliance with the Electoral Act and INEC guidelines and regulations” which the petitioner did not substantiate. He added that 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. “The evidence before the court showed that these innovations around accreditation and authentication were successful.

“The information generated by BVAS were stored on the Amazon Web Services (AWS). The evidence before court showed that AWS is the secure and reliable Amazon services across the world”. Responding to the issues around electronic transmission of results and uploading of results on IReV, Mahmoud explained that Atiku and the PDP contrived in their mind an electronic collation system. He said unfortunately, “the evidence does not support that. There is no such thing. The glitch which disrupted the real-time upload (of presidential election results from the polling units) only lasted for 4 hours 50 minutes on election day. “Second point of disagreement is that this glitch was contrived as a result of human interference. But Atiku failed woefully to establish that there was human interference.

“The evidence before the court showed clearly that the election went well, smoothly at the polling units and results were well collated,” Mahmoud added. On the issue of statutory requirement of 25 per cent votes in Abuja, Mahmoud said the argument was illogical, as it went against the express provisions of the Constitution. “The FCT must be treated as if it were a State. We submit that the case for non-compliance has not been made, the FCT argument has to fall on its face,” the lawyer argued, praying the court to dismiss this petition. Also defending his emergence, Tinubu’s lead counsel , Wole Olanipekun (SAN), argued that Atiku had abandoned his petition,owing to his inability to prove his case. He told the court that Atiku resorted to attackingTinubu’s person instead of proving his allegations.

“The court cannot give to the petitioners what they have not asked in their final written address. It is my submission that Atiku is a meddlesome interloper. “We urge your Lordships to dismiss this petition,” Olanipekun argued, adding that Atiku merely dumped electoral documents on the court without proving his suit against Mr Tinubu. Olanipekun told the court that Atiku won a paltry one quarter of the twothirds of votes in Abuja as stipulated in the constitution. On the manual collation of the presidential election results, Olanipekun (SAN) contended that the mode adopted did not diminish the credibility of the electoral process “Uploading results to IReV whether manually or electronically plays no role in collation of results; it does not add or decrease the number of votes. Collation is physical and manual,” Olanipekun said.

Chief Olanipekun said a recent judgment of the Court of Appeal in Lagos affirmed the discretion of INEC to apply any methodology in transmission of results. The APC on its part, urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s petition for lacking in substance. APC counsel , now the AGF, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), said Atiku’s witnesses did not dispute the figures (results) reeled out by INEC. “No one presented an alternative figure of results to counter INEC’s declaration.” On the issue of 25 per cent votes in FCT, Fagbemi, SAN, argued that toeing the path of argument by Atiku would give overbearing privilege to FCT voters over and above a majority of Nigerians. He prayed the court to affirm Tinubu’s victory and dismiss Atiku’s petition for lacking in merit. Tribunal dismisses PDP, Atiku’s petition Delivering judgement in Atiku’s petition, the Tribunal struck out several paragraphs of his petition relied upon to push Tinubu out of office. Also, several exhibits including witnesses statements he tendered to establish his allegations of irregularities, malpractices against the February 25 presidential election were rejected and discontenanced by the Tribunal. Reading the judgement, a member of the panel, Justice Moses Ugoh held that several parts of Atiku’s petition have no legs upon which they can stand and survive, hence, not competent. 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 petitioner 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. Justice Ugoh held 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 also dismissed 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. The Tribunal also faulted Atiku’s petition on the ground that it introduced several facts and allegations in unlawful ways that caught the respondents unaware, adding that the tactic employed was unfair and and made him clever by half. Among the offending new facts said to have been wrongfully introduced by Atiku were the allegations of criminal conviction, certificate forgery, dual citizenship of Guinea made against Tinubu outside the mode of filing petition. Justice Stephen Jonah Adah who read another ruling on objections against the petition expunged several documents tendered by Atiku on the ground that the exhibits were made during the pendency of the petition. Also, the evidence of several key witnesses of Atiku were expunged from the court record having been made in manners not known to law. The Tribunal held that the wrongful mode adopted by the PDP’s presidential candidate in the construction of the petition made several paragraphs of the petition liable for striking out for want of merit. The panel consequently dismissed the petition for lacking merit.