The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has requested the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to dismiss a petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Recalled that Peter Obi and LP filed a petition challenging the victory of Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the president-elect.
In their petition, Obi and the LP accused Tinubu’s running mate and Vice-President-Elect, Kashim Shettima, of double nomination in violation of the Electoral Act 2022.
They also alleged that the election was marred by rigging and manipulations and that INEC violated its own regulations by announcing the results before the total polling unit results had been fully scanned, uploaded, and transmitted electronically as required by the electoral act.
In response, INEC filed a counter-affidavit, claiming that the reliefs sought by Obi and his party are not grantable.
The commission asked the court to either dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, non-specific, ambiguous, and academic. INEC argued that the grounds of the petition are vague and discredited the claim that Tinubu was not elected by the majority of lawful votes cast.
The commission further argued that the petitioners’ prayer to declare that Obi scored the majority of lawful votes cast at the election and be declared winner was defective for failure to join necessary parties and for lack of requisite particulars and pleading to support the claim.
INEC said Obi cannot be returned as elected, having not polled the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and secured one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all states in the federation and the FCT.
INEC also addressed the issue of non-representation, stating that the petitioners did not have polling agents in all the polling units across Nigeria. They only submitted a list of 134,874 polling agents, which is 41,972 short of the 176,846 polling units across Nigeria.
The case is still ongoing, and the court is yet to make a final ruling on the matter.
Comments are closed.