Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) filed a petition against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) challenging the election of the APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu.
Referring to Bola Tinubu as the second respondent in the petition, one of the grounds on which the petition was based upon was the non-qualification of the APC candidate. The first ground of the petition states that “the 2nd respondent was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest the election.”
Based on the first ground in the petition, Tinubu needed to be qualified to run for the position of the president of Nigeria before he contested.
Peter Obi and the LP based their claim on a case against the second respondent centred on dishonesty – narcotics trafficking imposed on him by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division in Case No. 93C 4483.
The second respondent was then fined $460,000, which was forfeited to the US government. The amount was taken from his Citibank International account,
Bola Ahmed Tinubu was pronounced a drug dealer and unfit to be president.
An Abuja-based legal practitioner, Peter Ochu, pointed out that the constitutional requirement for disqualification was clearly stated. He said there was no hidden clause to what the Constitution provided, claiming that it was plain to a layman as the weight behind each word carried the exact meaning.
“The case between Obi vs Tinubu will most likely be dependent on the boldness of the court,” Barr. Ochu concluded.
Another legal practitioner, Basil Hemba, said what was before the court against Tinubu was an allegation and must be proven for it to hold water. He said he had also seen another publication of the US denying any sentencing of Tinubu, which contradicted the initial claim.
“Obi has to prove that his allegation against the disqualification of Tinubu is valid before the court, presenting legal documents to back it up. This is how his claim can be valid, else, it is just an allegation without substantial evidence,” he said.
Barr. Hemba, however, said if Tinubu was sentenced by a court in the US, for which a fine was also counted as a sentence, such would be valid in Nigeria as it was from a competent court.
President Bola Tinubu of the ruling APC has expressed his readiness to defend his mandate in court, saying he accepts the decision of the LP candidate, Mr Peter Obi to challenge the outcome of the election.
Tinubu’s position was made known in a statement issued in Abuja and signed by the Director, Media and Publicity at the APC Presidential Campaign Council PCC, Mr Bayo Onanuga.
Part of the statement reads; “We watched with dismay today’s press conference addressed by the Presidential candidate of Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, where he made very weird and wild claims about the outcome of the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections, an election in which he emerged a second runner up, according to the result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
“We welcome the decision of Mr Obi to seek redress in court as an aggrieved party if he is convinced of the evidence of electoral frauds he will present before the tribunal as alleged.
“Going to court is part of the electoral process and it is the most decent, statesmanlike and civilised course of action to take. We salute the decision. It is surely better than calling supporters to the streets and instigating social unrest”.
Tinubu added that before Mr Obi goes to court, he (Tinubu) considers it necessary to challenge some specific claims in his press address.
He said contrary to Obi’s statement, it is not true that the election held on 25th February was not free and fair.
According to Tinubu, the 2023 election is one of the most transparent and peaceful elections in the history of Nigeria.
He said it is because the process was credible that made it possible for Mr Obi’s Labour Party to record the over six million votes it got contrary to the pre-election forecast.
“We believe that the Labour Party Presidential Candidate contradicted himself and exposed himself to public ridicule by suggesting that the election was only credible in states and places his party won.
“We need us to forewarn Mr Obi, that when he gets to court he should be prepared to tell the world how his party won over 90% of votes in his region of South East while other parties got almost nothing. We have evidence of voter suppression, intimidation and harassment in the South East, especially of those who came out to vote for our party.
“Also when Mr Obi gets to court, he will have to convince the court with his allegation of rigging in over 40,000 polling units across the country, especially in North West and North East where his party had no party agents and did not sign results sheets as required by law. It is our assumption that the Labour Party will enlist PDP agents to prove its fraud claims since it is an affiliate of PDP.
“We want to state again for the umpteenth time that Mr Obi didn’t win the presidential election and could not have won under any circumstances. This is because he had no path to winning a national election in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society like Nigeria where a candidate running in a national election must appeal to the cross-section of our pluralistic society.
“Mr. Obi anchored his presidential campaign on the failed strategy of ethnicity and religion, the divisive and dangerous politics that has hobbled the progress of our country for decades.
“Nigerians simply rejected an ethnic and religious bigot through their ballots.
“Mr. Obi all through his campaign presented himself as the candidate of the Christians and the Church, who wanted to help ‘take back their country’ from the Nigerian Muslims.
“His campaign also ran on the engine of ethnicity, inflaming strong Igbo sentiments. He also sought to cash in on the supposed youth discontent in Nigeria, as fuelled by the EndSARS protest in 2020.
“While Labour Party positioned its candidate as the harvester of the youth votes, its planners forgot that Nigeria does not have a homogeneous and monolithic youth population that can deliver bloc vote to any candidate.
“All the major parties that contested the election also have strong youth appeal and supporters.
“The lesson in Mr Obi’s defeat in the election is that no politician in Nigeria can win a presidential race by being a sectional and an anointed candidate of any religion.
“Mr Obi and his party knew why they failed. They knew they had no path to victory with their negative and dangerous campaign.”
Akatah Abigail Chiamaka is a student of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Delta State University, Abraka
