September 18, 2023 NewsOrient

The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate in the February 25 Presidential Election, Mr. Peter Obi, have filed 51 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court to invalidate the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) had, in a unanimous judgment on September 6, 2023, dismissed the petitions and prayers Obi and his party, the Labour Party, made against Tinubu’s declaration as Nigeria’s President.
The justices held that all the petitions and prayers Obi made lacked merit.

In the appeal filed at the Supreme Court, Obi and LP however maintained that the PEPC erred in law and thereby reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed the petition they lodged to challenge the outcome of the presidential poll.

The appeal contends that the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the Court of Appeal’s ruling indulged in “a grave miscarriage of justice”, when it held that the appellants did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election.

The appeal also faulted the PEPC for dismissing his case on the premise that he did not specify the figures of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the ruling APC.

Obi equally accused the Justice Tsammani-led panel of erring in law when it relied on paragraph 4(1) (d) (2) and 54 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022 to strike out paragraphs of his petition.

While accusing the lower court of breaching his right to fair hearing, Obi, said evidence of his witnesses were “wrongly dismissed as incompetent.”

He told the apex court that the panel unjustly dismissed his allegation that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) uploaded 18,088 blurred results on its IReV portal.

He also alleged that the lower court ignored his allegation that certified true copies of documents that INEC issued to his legal team, comprised of 8,123 blurred results that contained blank A4 papers, pictures and images of unknown persons, purporting same to be the CTC of polling units’ results of the presidential election.

“The learned justices of the court below erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when they held and concluded that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practices and over-voting,” Obi contended.

A press release on the development from the Labour Party, signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, and made available to NewsOrient reads:

“The final legal battle for the contentious February 25th, 2023 Presidential Election begins with the Labour Party Presidential Candidate, Peter Gregory Obi, and the Labour Party, filing an appeal against the September 6, 2023 ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC.

Obi and LP’s team of lawyers led by Dr Livy Uzokwu SAN beat the deadline for the filing of the Appeal and are approaching the apex court on 51 grounds which they termed an error in law to prove that the All Progressives Congress, APC Presidential Candidate in the election, Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not win the election and that it was wrong for both INEC and the PEPC to declare him winner of the election when many incontrovertible points were proving otherwise.

In their reliefs, Obi and the Labour Party sought from the apex Court, four key points; Allow the Appeal, set aside the perverse Judgment of the PEPC, and grant the Reliefs sought in the petition, either in the main or in the alternative.

On the issue of the 25% requirement for Abuja, Obi and the Labour Party listed the particulars of error by the PEPC as follows. That the PEPC failed to appreciate that for the President to assume the office or position of the Governor of Abuja, is also under a mandate to secure 25% of the votes cast in the FCT.

They also accused the PEPC of overlooking the fuller purport of section 299 which will be more glaring on a calm examination of section 301 of the constitution.

No date yet has been fixed for the hearing of the case.”

NewsOrient