…rejects EU report presented by LP
…strikes out drug allegations
The Nigerian Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) sitting in the nation’s capital, Abuja, has ruled that the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, failed to prove their case against President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The tribunal headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani, ruled that the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi could not prove that he won the election.
The tribunal also dismissed the petition of the LP and Peter Obi regarding the alleged requirement of winning 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, as a requirement for winning the presidential election.
The tribunal said the interpretation of the 25 percent votes cast in the FCT by the Labour Party (LP) was “fallacious”.
“With due respect to counsel to the petitioners, their interpretation of the provision of the constitution, as regards the 25 percent in Abuja, is fallacious if not completely ludicrous,” the court said on Wednesday.
The court further held that there is equality of rights, irrespective of which part of the country voters prefer to live in.
The tribunal further rejected the report of the European Union (EU) Election Observers Mission on the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, tendered by Mr. Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP).
The expulsion is premised on the fact that the document was obtained by the petitioners from its registry, which was certified by its staff who is not a person with original custody of the document that was produced by the EU mission.
The court also rejected the blurred results sheets tendered by the petitioners on the grounds that they were not tied to any polling units to which the results related, which the petitioners failed to specify in their petition.
The court held that the petitioners lied that they could not identify the polling units because the result sheets were blurred. It noted that one of the same petitioners’ witnesses actually produced a report in which he analysed the same results, which he claimed to have sourced from INEC’s results viewing platform.
It further noted that having admitted that its agents signed for and collected copies of the result sheets, the petitioners cannot claim not to know the polling units affected, but merely chose not to specify the polling units in their petition.
In a similar vein, the Justice Haruna Tsamani led panel struck out the drug trafficking suit filed by Mr. Peter Obi.
Obi in the suit had argued that Tinubu was involved in a drug trafficking case in which he forfeited a whopping sum $460,000 to the government of the United States of America.
In his ruling on the suit, Justice Tsamani agreed with the submission of Tinubu’s legal counsel, citing a letter issued by the US Embassy in 2003.
Meanwhile, the allegation is one of the grounds upon which the petition of the LP was instituted against the declaration of Tinubu as president-elect after Nigeria’s February 25 presidential election.
