Our Reporter, New York
The Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the February 25 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has argued that the failure of the electoral body, INEC, to adhere to its own guidelines in the conduct of the presidential election may be considered irrelevant by the Supreme Court in their determination of whether the election was properly conducted or not, going by the precedents already laid down in the judgments of the Ekiti and Osun States governorship election petition cases.
Prince Adebayo made the remarks during a discussion on the events of the post-2023 election in a special edition of 90MinutesAfrica hosted by Rudolf Okonkwo on Sunday.
The SDP candidate believes that many of the promises made by INEC, including uploading the presidential election results to the IReV in real-time, are not recognised by law and thus not legally binding.
“The Supreme Court is interested in the information inside the BVAS, the information in the voter’s register, and the actual result sheets. The issues of uploading results to IReV and other promises made by INEC are mostly not relevant in the determination of whether an election was properly conducted or not,” Prince Adebayo argued.
One major plank of the opposition parties in challenging the INEC declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President-Elect before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal is that the electoral body failed to follow its own guidelines by not uploading polling unit results to the IReV portal.
But Prince Adebayo said that the Supreme Court, in their judgments in the Ekiti and Osun States governorship election petition cases, declared that point irrelevant. He says anyone who wants to prove that they won the presidential election must do so through the information in the BVAS, voter’s register, and actual result sheets in all the polling units where they believed they won.
Furthermore, the SDP candidate said the accusation before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was convicted in the United States was already time-barred by the Nigerian constitution.
“The Nigerian constitution limits any conviction to the last ten years. So if it happened thirty years ago, though it is still morally reprehensible if the conviction actually happened, you can only use it to campaign against the person, but you not bring it to the courts because they are constitutionally barred from talking about it after ten years,” he said.
Also commenting on the issue of double nominations by the Bola Tinubu’s running mate Kashim Shettima, Prince Adebayo said he doesn’t think “they are likely to be considered serious issues by the court.”
“Primary election is not done for the position of running mate. So even if Shettima submitted his withdrawal from the senatorial race late, the important thing is that on the day of the election, while he was running as VP, somebody else was contesting as a senator in his constituency,” he posited.
