Stephen Ukandu, with Agency Report
The Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, on Tuesday, reserved judgment in a petition filed by the Labour Party (LP), and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Obi and his party, in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023 are seeking the nullification of Tinubu’s election.
After all parties adopted their final written addresses, the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-man panel reserved judgment for a date to be communicated later to both the Petitioners and Respondents.
Respondents are Tinubu, his Vice, Kashim Shettima, APC, and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that following the closing of the cases of the respondents on July 5, time was given to parties to file their written addresses.
Adopting their final written addresses filed on July 14 , Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, lead counsel for INEC urged the court to uphold their objections and take the petition as lacking in merit and should be dismissed.
Mahamoud said there are five issues listed but he would speak on two.
One of them according to Mahmoud was the noncompliance and the conduct of the election conducted by INEC.
According to him, all these revolve in the use of technology and the petitioners totally misunderstood what was used, that is the Bimodal voters accredited (BVAs) and IreV portal.
He argued that the evidence before the court showed clearly that the first respondent made sure technology was deployed for the election.
The two points of disagreement he said were the contribution in the minds of the petitioners that electronic collation of the results manually system was carried out.
He added that the petitioners failed to present evidence to support their allegation on electronic collation of any of the election results.
Mahmoud argued further that the petitioners alleged that the glitches that occurred during the election was orchestrated to manipulate the result of the election.
Similarly, Wole Olanipekun, SAN counsel for Tinubu and Shettima urged the court to dismiss the petition for lacking in merit.
He said before the law, the petitioners have abandoned their petition, adding he would look at three areas.
He argued that non-compliance is one area, that results have not been electronically uploaded to IreV is not part of collation system.
He added that all collation was done physically.
For the 25 per cent votes of the FCT, he argued that Tinubu secured two third votes adding Obi does not have locus standi for rerun election because he was not the 1st runner up.
He further said there is no connectivity between the the petitioners and the petition.
Counsel for APC, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN aligned with the submissions of Mahmoud and Olanipekun, however, said the petition is ambitious.
He added that the petitioners did not dispute that voting took place and results announced.
He argued that to dispute the results, evidence must be given from every polling unit.
He argued further on FCT 25 per cent votes and qualification of candidates.
Responding, Livy Uzoukwu, SAN counsel for the petitioners argued that the respondents have laboured in vain to understand the importance of IreV.
He added that their witness told the court during his evidence how important the IreV was.
He said the election cannot be said to be credible if INEC can give Certified true copy (CTC) of 8,123 of blurred result sheets.
He added with some blank and others with picture images adding that CTC of documents should be a replica of the original copy.
He argued that there was no glitches as claimed by the respondents.
Uzoukwu therefore submitted that the petitioners have proved their petition particularly in the allegations of non-compliance.
The PEPC had earlier, also reserved judgment in the petition by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, also challenging President Tinubu.
