Less than two months to the expiration of the period for hearing and determination of election petition, parties in a petition by Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party challenging the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election on Tuesday, adopted their final written addresses.
Obi and his party, in their joint petition want the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja to annul Tinubu’s election on the grounds of substantial non compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, the Electoral Act and guidelines for the conduct of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Lead counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) while adopting the final written address on behalf of his client, submitted that Obi and LP’s petition should be dismissed for lacking in merit.
He told the court that, the petitioners failed to show that, there was electronic collation of results in any election in the country, adding that, what was in the place of electronic collation was the manual collation system.
On the technical glitch, Mahmoud said the petitioners failed to prove the allegation that the glitch was caused by human interference and that, their claim failed since they cannot establish the allegation.
He said, “The glitch that occurred, which affected transmission for about four hours does not affect the election results”, and urged the Court to dismiss the petition for lacking in merit.
Tinubu, through his lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) said, from the results declared, Tinubu scored one quarter of the two-thirds of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja and added that, there is no nexus between the petition, the reliefs and the parties and urged the court to dismiss the petition for, “been a jurisprudential fiction”.
Counsel to APC, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), while adopting the party’s final written address said, even if the court ordered a re-run of the presidential election, Obi is not qualified to participate as it is a horse race between a winner of an election and the person who came second in the election.
Fagbemi said the FCT does not enjoy any special status as far as the presidential election is concerned, explaining that, a candidate does not need to score 25 percent of votes cast in the FCT for him to be declared winner of a presidential election.
Dr Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), lead Counsel to Obi and his party told the court that the respondents have laboured in vain to degrade and dismiss the importance of I-ReV in an election, adding that the Supreme Court held in the case of Oyetola and INEC that I-ReV is part of an electoral process.
We want to submit that the respendents have laboured in vain to diminish the importance of IREV and in the case of Oyetola V INEC, which Fagbemi cited, stated that IREV is part of the electoral process. I will refer to all the witness depositions of RW1 because I will like to drag them out of their comfort zone. He said “I know that the authentic and statutory prescribed … is the IREV portal”. They are trying to downplay that. An election which 18,088 blurred results were uploaded to the IREV is a faulty election.
There is something remarkable about this matter, INEC issued CTC of purported polling unit results to the petitioners, out of that number: 8,123 were blurred. Certified by INEC. Some were blank copies of A4 papers. Also, among them you have pictures certified by INEC. Court: We are not writing because it is in your Written address
The LP lead counsel continues: How can they say they conducted an election properly? It is my respectful submission that a CTC of any document in a result must be an exact replica of the original. They failed to produce the originals of the copies the certified because it couldn’t be any other than blank sheets.
Let me go to the issue of Fine or Forfeiture which the 2nd respondent talked about. It is not in doubt that the 2nd Respondent forfeited 460k dollars as proceeds from narcotics and money laundering. They do not want to hear that. We clearly relied on section 137(1)(d) but they are pushing it to another section, E. You cannot make our case for us! The provision says ‘any Court or Tribunal’! It is very clear. My Lords there is the attempt to claim that the 1st Petitioner is not accommodated under section 134.
The submission that in the case of rerun, there is the argument that the 1st Petitioner will not be accommodated. The only candidate who comes squarely within the province of section 134(3)(b) is the 1st Petitioner. Even if they created wrong interpretations it cannot work. The case of Awolowo v Shagari was cited, of course the provisions now of the constitution was not available to interpret that case. Let me quickly refer to what my brother for 2nd & 3rd respondent said that the petition was abandoned. I couldn’t believe this coming from my brother whom I respected.
My brothers did not urge you to interpret “AND” as being disjunctive. I didn’t hear that. I submit with the greatest respect that the petitioners have proved their petition particularly with the issue of non-compliance. They had no defense. At one point they said it was the printing toner that caused the issues. At some point they said glitch could have caused it but the alleged glitch lasted only 4 hours but up to 29th of May they were still giving us blurred results of the election. Finally, the petitioners have proved that there was no glitch whatsoever as alleged by the respondents.
After all the parties adopted their final written addresses, Justice Haruna Tsammani, leading other four other Justices of the court reserved judgment to a date that would be communicated to parties in the petition.
