Tribunal Reserves Judgement in Atiku, Obi’s Petitions against Tinubu

•Atiku, Obi, Datti, Adichie, others storm court at final address proceedings

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Presidential Election Petitions Court (PREPEC), yesterday, reserved judgement in two separate petitions filed by the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and that of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, challenging the declaration of Senator Bola Tinubu as President.

The five-member panel, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, said the date for judgement in the two petitions would be communicated to parties, shortly after all parties adopted their final written addresses for and against the petitions.

Last month, the tribunal had also reserved ruling in the petition by the Allied People’s Movement (APM) seeking the disqualification of Tinubu from the February 25 presidential election on account of alleged unlawful nomination of the vice presidential candidate, Senator Kashim Shettima.

However, at yesterday’s proceedings, the respondents, who adopted their final addresses, first urged the court to dismiss the two petitions for lacking in merit, adding that the petitioners failed to prove allegations contained in their separate petitions.

The proceedings were watched by the two petitioners, party loyalists, friends, supporters, as well as well-wishers.

Atiku, who was accompanied by PDP’s Acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum, his retinue of aids, and others, entered the courtroom a few minutes before 9am, sporting a sky blue kaftan.

Obi, who had witnessed almost all the proceedings in his petition, was accompanied by one of Nigeria’s famous writers, Chimamanda Adichie.

Adopting his final address as its brief of argument against the petition, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which conducted the disputed February 25 presidential election, observed that the case of the petitioners was based on the misconception that the Electoral Act, 2022, provided for electronic collation of results.

INEC’s lawyer, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, maintained that collation of results remained manual, adding that the introduction of INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) Portals was to enhance the credibility of the election but that “collation remained manual throughout the election.”

The senior lawyer specifically told the panel, “IReV is simply for public view not part of the collation system.”

Similarly, the electoral umpire argued that the 18,088 blurred results sheets tendered by Obi and LP to prove corrupt practices amounted to nothing because the blurred results did not in any way suggest that the original copies were also blurred “and we do not know why they are blurred.”

Mahmoud noted that while parties agreed that a glitch occurred during the transmission of the results using the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) to the IReV, they disagreed with the petitioners that the glitch was deliberate and aimed at manipulating the process in favour of the second respondent.

Likewise adopting his final address, Tinubu, through his lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, argued along the submission of INEC that the IReV was never a part of the collation process. He submitted that the petitioners did not show how the failure to transmit results real time with the IReV affected the results accrued to the parties.

Like INEC, Tinubu insisted that his failure to score 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) could not invalidate his election. He said even if the court thought otherwise and ordered a rerun, such a rerun could only be between him and Atiku, as the law already barred Obi, on the grounds that he did not come second in the poll.

APC, represented by Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, urged the court to discountenance the evidence of petitioners’ witnesses on the grounds that pleadings were not linked with evidence, and that the petitioners merely dumped documents on the court without anyone speaking to them.

Fagbemi submitted that there was no part of the petition that had not received judicial pronouncement or resolution by the courts, and on the issue of mandatory requirement for the uploading of results through the IReV, he claimed that the Supreme Court, in a judgement, had settled the matter in the case of Oyetola and Adeleke.

Fagbemi further cited other judgements of courts to argue that INEC had discretion to adopt any mode of transmission/transfer of election results.

Speaking to Tinubu’s forfeiture of the sum of $460,000 to the United States of America on account of narcotics trafficking and money laundering, the APC counsel pointed out that the issue was not a ground for disqualification, because the incident occurred over 30 years ago, adding that the country’s constitution provided that in such event the person would be forgiven after 10 years of the alleged offence.

But both Atiku and Obi disagreed with the submissions of the respondents in their separate final addresses.

Atiku, through his lead lawyer, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, urged the panel to keep to its promise to deliver “substantial justice and not technical justice” in their petition, adding that they had fully established allegations raised in their petition through the testimonies of witnesses called as well as the plethora of documents tendered.

Atiku challenged the panel to break the jinx that presidential election had never been nullified or could never be nullified by using the case at hand to set a precedent.

Uche claimed that through documentary evidence and testimonies of witnesses, it was proven that the Electoral Act, 2022, was aimed at uprooting the issue of manipulation that usually occurred during collation. He said the petitioners agreed that the IReV technology was deployed, when they admitted that there was a glitch in the transmission of the presidential election results.

“The substantiality of the non-compliance was nationwide,” he said, arguing that the said glitch was as a result of human interference.

While urging the court to consider the report of the European Union Observer Mission on the general election, Uche noted that if the court must do justice in the petition, it should not dwell on technicalities but keep to its promise towards substantial justice.

Thus, calling for the nullification of Tinubu’s election, Uche submitted that the fact that precedent had not been created did not mean it could not be done, saying, “Let that precedent be created in this case.”

Similarly, Obi, through his lead counsel, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, observed that the respondents only laboured in vain by trying to degrade the importance of IReV, when the Supreme Court had already settled the fact that IREV was part of the electoral process.

Uzoukwu stated that Tinubu’s sole witness, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, attested to the importance of IReV in the electoral process.

Besides, he claimed that INEC manipulated the election results, which was why it could not produce in court the original of the blurred copies of results sheets it certified for the petitioners.