16th July, 2023
Eminent lawyers led by Chief Wole Olanipekun have told the Presidential Election Petition Court that Peter Obi’s petition, challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu, is strange to Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence.
The lawyers, representing Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress, made the submission in the final written address submitted to the court on Friday, in response to Obi and Labour Party’s challenge.
In the 49-page address, the lawyers urge the tribunal to dismiss the case for lacking merit.
“The petition in issue in this address is very novel in the sense that it is not a petition stricto senso, familiar to our electoral jurisprudence, as the petitioners are not, this time around, complaining about election rigging, ballot box snatching, ballot box stuffing, violence, thuggery, vote buying, voters’ intimidation, disenfranchisement, interference by the military or the police, and such other electoral vices.
“The crux of their grouse this time around, is that while the presidential election was peacefully conducted all over the country (as corroborated by their primary witnesses) and the results accurately recorded in the various Form EC8As, some unidentified results were not uploaded electronically to the INEC Election Result Viewing ( I R E V ) Portal.
“The other remote contention of the petitioners is that the 2nd respondent did not score 25% (or one-quarter) of the votes recorded in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja (FCT); while the petitioners have also alluded to the respondent’s non- qualification, without any fact known to law”.
Further in the address, the lawyers contend that the “remote” contention of the petitioners that Tinubu’s election should be cancelled for not scoring 25 percent or one-quarter of the votes recorded in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is not backed by any law as the use of “and” in the constitution is conjunctive and not disjunctive.
“This case clearly cries to high heavens in vain to be fed with relevant and admissible evidence.
“The appellant woefully failed to realise that judges do not act like the oracles of life, which is often engaged in crystal gazing and thereafter would proclaim a new oba in succession to a deceased oba.
“Judges cannot perform miracles in the handling of civil claims, and at least of all manufacture evidence for the purpose of assisting a plaintiff win his case.”
The lawyer also trashed Obi’s claim that Tinubu should not have stood for the election because of his forfeiture of some money to the US government in 1993.
While Obi’s lawyers had claimed it was a criminal forfeiture, Tinubu’s lawyers counter it was a civil case, in which Tinubu was not convicted.
Read the full statement here: PETER OBI VS. INEC FINAL WRITTEN ADDRESS