The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in Nigeria, on Monday, failed to respond to Labour Party candidate Peter Obi‘s claim that the 2023 presidential election was rigged.
The Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, had resumed its proceedings to allow the electoral body to call its first witness to justify its declaration of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, candidate Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
However, INEC informed the court that its witness was unavailable when the case was called for a hearing through a team of attorneys led by Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN.
The Commission stated its intention to call three witnesses to support the validity of the contested presidential election results, but it informed the court that the first witness it intended to call was embroiled in a domestic dispute.
As a result, the case’s lead attorney, Mahmoud, convinced the court’s five-member panel, presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, to postpone further proceedings until Tuesday.
The head of Obi’s legal team, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, did not object to the request for an adjournment.
Similarly, President Tinubu’s lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, and the APC’s, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, stated that they were not opposed to the request for the matter to be adjourned.
Due to this development, the panel decided to postpone the case until Tuesday so that the electoral body could present its first witness.
Obi, who finished third in the presidential election, closed his case on June 23 after presenting several documentary evidence and calling a total of 13 of the 50 witnesses he had originally scheduled to testify before the court.
The polling unit results from 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT, Abuja, were among the exhibits he presented to the court. He also presented a collection of documents that contained the total number of Permanent Voters Cards, or PVCs, that were gathered in 32 states prior to the 2023 general elections.
In addition to submitting four video exhibits, one of which was a press conference in which INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu promised that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, machines would be used to electronically transmit election results to the IReV portal in real-time, Obi and his party also submitted an equal number of documents listing the total number of registered voters in each of the stats.
Certified true copies of INEC Forms EC40Gs, EC40G1, and EC40GPU, which were reports of various polling units where elections did not take place, were other electoral documents the court admitted in evidence.
All of the respondents had contested the admissibility of every document offered as evidence and promised to provide justifications in their final written response.
Obi had gone before the court to object to the declaration that President Tinubu had won the presidential election.
In the joint petition he filed with his party, Obi, maintained that President Tinubu was not the valid winner of the election.
In the same petition, the petitioners argued that President Tinubu was ineligible to run for president (case number CA/PEPC/03/2023).
The petitioners contend that Shettima, Tinubu’s running mate, was still the APC’s choice for the Borno Central Senatorial seat at the time Tinubu switched to running for vice president.
The petitioners also questioned Tinubu’s eligibility to run for president, claiming that he had previously been found guilty of a crime involving dishonesty and drug trafficking and fined $460,000 by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in Case No: 93C 4483.
The petitioners argued that INEC acted in violation of its own Regulations and Guidelines on the grounds that the election was invalid due to corrupt practices and non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022.
The petitioners argued that the electoral body was legally required to establish and implement technological devices for the accreditation, verification, continuation, and authentication of voters and their information as specified in its Regulations during the conduct of the presidential election.
They are therefore asking the court, among other things, to rule that Tinubu and the APC wasted all of the votes cast for them because he was ineligible or disqualified.
“That it be determined that on the basis of the remaining votes (after discountenancing the votes credited to the 2nd Respondent) the 1st Petitioner (Obi) scored a majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and had not less than 25% of the votes cast in at least 2/3 of the States of the Federation, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of the 25th February 2023 presidential election.
“That it be determined that the 2nd Respondent 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 25th February, 2023.
The petitioners also request that INEC be ordered to conduct a new election in which Tinubu, Shettima, and the APC, who are listed as the second, third, and fourth respondents, respectively, are not allowed to run.
The petitioners’ second alternative request is for the court to declare the presidential election invalid on the grounds that it was not substantially conducted in accordance with the Electoral Act of 2022 and the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Likewise, they applied for an order, “cancelling the presidential election conducted on 25th February 2023 and mandating the 1st Respondent to conduct a fresh election for the President, the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar also filed a petition to invalidate President Tinubu’s election, and the court will resume hearing it at 2 p.m.
