Under fire from the barrage of criticisms trailing the 2023 general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has appeared before the court to defend the presidential poll that produced Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Kashim Shettima as president-elect and vice president-elect respectively.
Accordingly, the commission prayed the presidential election petitions tribunal (PEPT) sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja to dismiss a petition filed by Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, saying the reliefs sought are not grantable.
The electoral body contended that Tinubu and Shettima who were All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential and vice presidential candidates were duly declared and returned as elected and issued Certificates of Return having fulfilled the requirements of the constitution to be declared winners and returned
INEC is the 1st respondent in the petition filed before the tribunal by Obi, the 1st petitioner, and LP, the 2nd petitioner.
They had dragged INEC, Tinubu, Shettima and the APC to the court as 1st to 4th respondents respectively.
In its reply filed on Monday night at the tribunal by its lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), the commission prayed the court to either “dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic.”
The petitioners are seeking the nullification of the election of Tinubu and Shettima in the February 25 presidential poll.
“The 2nd petitioner conducted its presidential primary on May 30, 2022 which purportedly produced 1st petitioner as its candidate, which time contravened Section 77(3) of the Electoral Act for him to contest the primary election as a member of the 2nd petitioner.”
The party argued that Obi was not a member of LP at the time of his alleged sponsorship.
The APC argued that “by the mandatory provisions of Section 77 (1) (2) and (3) of the Electoral Act 2022, a political party shall maintain a register and shall make such register available to INEC not later than 30 days before the date fixed for the party primaries, congresses and convention.”
It stated further that all the PDP’s presidential aspirants were screened on 29 April 29, an exercise Mr Obi participated in and cleared to contest while being a member of the party.
It argued that the petition was incompetent since Mr Obi’s name could not have been in LP’s register made available to INEC at the time he joined the party.
The APC equally argued that the petition was improperly constituted having failed to join Atiku Abubakar and PDP who were necessary parties to be affected by the reliefs sought
“By Paragraph 17 of the petition, the petitioners, on their own, stated that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came second in the presidential election with 6,984,520 votes as against the petitioners who came third with 6,101,533 votes;
“At Paragraph 102 (ii) of the petition, the petitioners urged the tribunal to determine that the 1st petitioner scored the majority of lawful votes without joining Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the petition.
“For the tribunal to grant prayer (iii) of the petitioners, the tribunal must have set aside the scores and election of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar must be heard before his votes can be discountenanced by the tribunal,” it said.
The party said the petition and the identified paragraphs were in breach of the mandatory provisions of Paragraph 4(1) (D) of the 1st Schedule to the Electoral Act, 2022.
According to APC, Paragraphs 60-77 of the petition are non-specific, vague and/or nebulous and thereby incompetent contrary to Paragraph 4(1)(d) of the 1st Schedule to the Electoral Act, 2022.
It said that the allegations of non-compliance must be made distinctly and proved on a polling unit basis but none was specified or provided in any of the paragraphs of the petition.
“Paragraphs 59-60 of the petition disclose no identity or particulars of scores and polling units supplied in 18,088 units mentioned therein,” it added.
Accordingly, the party argued that the tribunal lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain pre-election complaints embedded in the petition as presently constituted, among other arguments.
The APC urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition with substantial cost as the same was devoid of any merit and founded.
Credit: Leadership