Court to Obi, LP: Your petition against Tinubu is incompetent, unmeritorious

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has struck out the petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, against President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima.

The tribunal dismissed the petition on Wednesday, September 6, 2023, declaring it as incompetent.

The Star had earlier reported that the court held that the Labour Party and Obi failed to provide proof of a criminal conviction against President Tinubu.

The petitioners (LP and Obi) had prayed the court to nullify Tinubu’s election on the ground that there was $460,000 forfeiture order against him by a United States District Court, Illinois.

In his lead judgement, Justice Haruna Tsammani held that Obi and his party failed to substantiate allegations of fraud and drug allegations against Tinubu.

The tribunal declared that Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was duly qualified to contest the February 25 presidential election.

READ ALSO: Tribunal: 25% votes in FCT not mandatory to be president

The judge stated that the petitioners failed to prove that Tinubu was found guilty of any offence involving any act of criminality.

Justice Tsammani ruled that the evidence before the court showed that the forfeiture order against Tinubu was a civil matter and not a criminal matter, adding that there was no evidence to show that the president was either arraigned or convicted in the U.S. over any alleged crime to warrant his disqualification.

He also dismissed the claim by Obi and LP that the election that produced Tinubu did not comply with the 2022 Electoral Act on the grounds that the results of the election were not transmitted in real-time to the INEC’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV).

Tsammani said it wasn’t stated in the Electoral Act that elections must be electronically transmitted for collation.

He also dismissed Obi and LP’s petitions on 25 per cent votes of Tinubu in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), saying Abuja is like other states.

It would be recalled that INEC, on March 1, 2023, announced that Tinubu won the presidential election ahead of 17 other candidates who participated in the election.

It declared that Tinubu scored 8,794,726 votes to defeat the two major contenders – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who came second with 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the Labour Party, who came third with 6,101,533 votes.

However, dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, both Atiku and Obi approached the court to invalidate it.

The Star