The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja has ordered that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, be served with copies of petitions seeking to nullify his election via substituted means. The court, which was led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, directed that the petitions should be served on Tinubu through his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). The ruling followed separate ex-parte applications brought before the court by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and his counterpart in the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
Atiku and Obi accused Tinubu of deliberately avoiding the service of their petitions on him. The duo told the court that their several attempts to effect service of the petitions on Tinubu had proved abortive. The petitioners claimed that the President-elect deliberately made himself elusive to frustrate their efforts to hand him copies of the petition as required by the law.
Consequently, relying on Section 6(6a) and 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution, Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act, and Paragraph 8 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022, the petitioners sought the intervention of the court. Atiku and Obi further supported their ex-parte motions dated March 23 with affidavits of urgency and non-service, even as they persuaded the court to hear the applications outside the pre-hearing session of their substantive petitions.
While Atiku’s application was moved on Friday by his legal team led by Mr. Eyitayo Jegede, SAN, that of Obi and LP was moved by Mr. Ikechukwu Ezechukwu, SAN. “Having heard the applications by counsel to the petitioners including the affidavit in support, the applications are hereby granted,” the Justice Ikyegh-led panel ruled. The panel equally granted leave to the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) to serve its own petition on Tinubu via substituted means.
It is recalled that on March 1, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election. According to INEC, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku, who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes. However, both Atiku and Obi rejected the outcome of the election, which they insisted was rigged in Tinubu’s favour.
Aside from accusing INEC of acting in breach of its own electoral Regulations and Guidelines, the petitioners equally argued that Tinubu was not legally qualified to participate in the presidential contest. Moreover, they argued that he did not garner the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election, adding that votes credited to the APC candidate amounted to wasted votes by reason of corrupt practices that marred the election. Atiku further alleged that the electoral body deployed a third-party device he said was used to intercept and divert votes to the APC and its candidate.
While both Obi and Atiku separately claimed that they won the election, they asked the court to either declare them winners or in the alternative, order a fresh election. Both petitioners urged the court to compel INEC to withdraw the Certificate of Return it earlier issued to Tinubu of the APC.
Comments are closed.