The All Progressives Congress and its presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Tuesday, commenced a legal battle to prevent moves by opposition parties to halt the ongoing collation of Saturday’s presidential election results.
The candidate and his party filed a suit to restrain the Labour Party and the People’s Democratic Party preventing the continuous announcement and collation of results of the poll.
The suit was marked FHC/KN/CS/43/2023 and filed before the Federal High Court in Kano.
The Action Alliance and the Independent National Electoral Commission were joined as defendants while the APC vice presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, was also listed as a plaintiff.
According to Daily Trust, the plaintiffs in a motion on notice filed alongside the originating summons asked the court to make the order restraining the defendants from stopping the collation and announcement of the results.
They argued that “damages will not adequately compensate for the injury that may be occasioned on the Plaintiffs if by the Defendants stop the collation of the result.”
The PUNCH reports that the PDP, LP and the African Democratic Congress have asked the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, to step aside and demanded the conduct of fresh elections.
“We are therefore constrained by this development to state that INEC compromised the integrity of this election even before collation commenced at the polling units.
“A failure to comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act and the guidelines makes it imperative that all results recently uploaded on the IReV portal must be updated before they are announced.
“INEC went back on that promise…This election is not free and far from being fair and transparent. We shall not be part of the electoral process currently going on at the National Collation Centre and we demand that this sham of an election be immediately cancelled.
“We also call for a fresh election to be carried out in accordance to the laid down INEC procedure. We, therefore, call on Yakubu to step aside from his role,” the LP National Chairman, Julius Abure, who delivered the position of the three opposition parties, said.
Credit: Punch