2nd April, 2023
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has appointed nine Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to defend its handling of the February 25th presidential election.
Mr. Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud (SAN), a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) will lead the team, according to City Lawyer.
Others include Stephen Adehi (SAN), Oluwakemi Pinheiro (SAN), Miannaya Essien (SAN), Abdullahi Aliyu (SAN), Garba Hassan (SAN), Musa Attah (SAN), and Patricia Obi (SAN).
This comes after the electoral umpire announced last week that it had budgeted over N3 billion to defend the results of the presidential and National Assembly elections, as well as the March 18 governorship and state House of Assembly elections.
On March 1, 2023, the commission declared Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
INEC announced that Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes and received more than 25% of the votes cast in 30 states, while Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) received 6,984,520 votes to finish second.
According to the election umpire, Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) finished third with 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) finished fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
However, Atiku, Obi, and two other presidential candidates, Solomon Okangbuan of the Action Alliance (AA) and Chichi Ojei of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) have filed petitions at the Presidential Elections Tribunal in Abuja, challenging INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election.
In his petition, Obi claimed that Tinubu “was not duly elected by the majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.”
Furthermore, he alleged that there was rigging in 11 states, vowing that he would prove his claim in the declaration of results based on the uploaded results.
The petition reads: “The petitioners shall show that in the computation and declaration of the result of the election, based on the updated results, the votes recorded for the second respondent (Tinubu) did not comply with the legitimate process for the computation of the result and disfavoured the petitioners in the following states: Rivers, Lagos, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Imo, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Plateau and other states of the federation.”
Obi and Labour Party (LP) said INEC violated its regulations when it announced the result, although, at the time of the announcement, the totality of the polling unit results had yet to be fully scanned, uploaded, and transmitted electronically as required by the Electoral Act.
Among other prayers, the petitioners urged the tribunal to “determine that, at the time of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, the second and third respondents (Tinubu and Shettima) were not qualified to contest the election;
“That it be determined that all the votes recorded for the second respondent in the election are wasted votes, owing to the non-qualification of the second and third respondents;
“That it is determined that based on the remaining votes (after discountenancing the votes credited to the second respondent) the first petitioner (Obi) scored a majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and had not less than 25 per cent of the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja and satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential election;
“That it be determined that the second respondent (Tinubu), having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the presidential election in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023.”
The petitioners also argued that Tinubu, “at the time of the (presidential) election, was not qualified to contest the election.”