President Bola Tinubu has requested that the Supreme Court reject an appeal that PDP candidate for 2023, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, filed to void his election.
In a 42-page argument brief submitted by his team of 17 attorneys, which included ten Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Tinubu asked the Supreme Court to uphold what he called a “well-considered decision of the Court of Appeal,” which on September 6 dismissed the joint petition that Atiku and his party had filed against him. The Court of Appeal was sitting as the Presidential Election Petition Court, or PEPC.
Tinubu informed the top court that, according to statistics, he received 25% of the vote in the presidential election held on February 25. He continued to maintain that he was legitimately returned as the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
In 21 states of the federation, he informed the court, the former Vice President and the PDP had only garnered 25% of the total votes, “as against the constitutional requirement of 24.7 states, which is the mathematical results of two-thirds of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT (making 37).”
According to Tinubu, INEC was forced to proclaim him the winner of the presidential contest since he had the most number of legitimate votes cast and had complied with all relevant constitutional conditions.
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In court, he stated that Atiku and the PDP had approached the PEPC on March 21 “on trumped-up allegations of non-compliance with provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, corrupt practices, non-scoring of majority of lawful votes cast at the election and non-qualification of the Respondent,” because they were unhappy with the voting results.
“The petition itself, which had no facts in support thereof, exposed the hyperbolic character of the foregoing allegations,” stated President Tinubu.
“Beginning with the Respondent’s claim of non-qualification, the Appellants’ petition to the lower court only stated that Tinubu, the second respondent, lacked the constitutional threshold at the time of the election and was therefore ineligible to contest.”
He informed the Supreme Court that until all parties involved in the case had finished filing their replies to the petition, Atiku and his party had not provided an explanation of what they meant by the “constitutional threshold.”
“Cooked-up accusations”
At this juncture, they unveiled their fabricated charges of disparities in the second respondent’s educational background, dual citizenship, and other perplexing claims made through the back door.
In contrast to INEC’s statement, they asserted that they received the greatest number of votes cast in the election; nevertheless, they did not offer any alternative score that they believed to be accurate, either for the Respondent or for themselves, throughout their appeal.
“Although they claimed that there were several instances of non-compliance and corrupt practices during the election, the passages in their petition that made these claims were incredibly imprecise, general, and ambiguous.
“The Appellants, through their petition, chose to regale the lower court and the Respondents with breath-taking suspense, by stating that the said facts will be disclosed in their statistician’s report which was not part of the petition filed, for these allegations which ought to have been specifically demonstrated through facts and figures, such as polling units and numbers.”
“Since even the devil himself does not know the heart of man, it is commonsense that the Respondents will only be able to respond to the facts in the petition and not on the crucial, though anticipated statistician’s report.”
President Tinubu went on to inform the supreme court that thirteen of the twenty-seven witnesses Atiku called had not had their witness statements pre-loaded with the petition.
“With these, it was clear that the Appellants intended to pursue a blockbuster, filled with exciting suspense, breathtaking surprises, and exuberant hide-and-seek recreational activities, rather than to prosecute a petition; and this necessitated a series of objections from the Respondents,
contesting the validity of the petition, its itemized vague paragraphs, the sworn statements of the subpoenaed witnesses, which were not accompanied by the petition, and the voluminous documents that were requested to be tendered but were either unnecessary or did not follow the required admissibility guidelines.
According to Tinubu, “the Appellants’ approbative and reprobative posture logically indicates that, deep down, they are convinced that the Second Respondent won the election, but they have chosen to embark on this voyage of abuse of court process.”
As a result, he asked the Supreme Court to reject Atiku’s appeal, which is registered as SC/CV/935/2023.
INEC, Tinubu, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) were listed as the first, third, and fourth respondents in the appeal, respectively.
The Supreme Court has not yet set a date to begin hearing arguments regarding the presidential issue.
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