Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
The candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 presidential poll, Peter Obi, has accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of ambushing Nigeria’s judiciary and cannibalising the country’s democracy.
Obi made the accusations in his response to Tinubu’s written address in the suit seeking to nullify Tinubu’s declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as winner of the presidential poll.
Recall that Tinubu had in his address by his legal team led by Wole Olanipekun, SAN, threatened “that if the Court interprets the Electoral Act section 134 against them it might lead to breakdown of law and order.”
Tinubu’s legal team had told the tribunal that an interpretation of the law requiring 25 percent of the total lawful votes cast 24 states and the Federal Capital Territory could lead to anarchy.
But responding to that assertion, Obi’s legal team dismissed Tinubu’s outburst as “a cheap, misguided, and destructive blackmail clearly intended to target the country’s judicialism and constitutionalism,” adding that “it also aims at cannibalising our democracy.”
Obi said that Tinubu and his party went too low and abandoned discretion when they claimed as follows: “Our submission is that the Petitioners are inviting anarchy by their ventilation of this issue of non-transmission of results electronically, by INEC.”
A statement by Obi’s media team quoted the legal team as stating in the response: “that the careless and absurd statements of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents intend to raise the issue of insecurity if the Petitioners were to emulate the bad example of the 2nd-3rd Respondents but remarked that such will never happen because of the petitioner’s discipline and peaceful disposition and believe in the rule of law.”
The statement further read: “Still underscoring the pointlessness and the supererogatory of the Respondent’s threat, Obi’s legal team wondered, ‘When has it become offensive for Petitioners to canvass a ground prescribed for the challenge of an election in section 134(1)(b) of the Electoral Act 2022?”
Obi rather told Tinubu that “where rule of law is trampled upon, anarchy reigns supreme.”
“The legal eggheads attributed the needless flare-up and effusion of the Respondents to desperation taken too far which can be extremely dangerous.
“Let the 2nd-3rd Respondents know that where the rule of law is trampled upon or truncated, anarchy reigns supreme.”
Meanwhile, the Electoral Court is expected to deliver its judgment before the first week of September when it would have exhausted its constitutional lifespan of 180 days.
