The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has argued that the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, failed to show how he scored the majority of lawful votes during the February 25 presidential election.
Mr. Obi, who came third in the election, had filed his petition at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to challenge the outcome of the polls on the grounds of allegations of electoral fraud, among other alleged irregularities.
He urged the court to nullify President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the poll.
He also called on the court to either declare him the winner of the election or order a fresh poll.
Mr. Obi and his party, LP, alleged that Mr. Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima were not qualified to vie for Nigeria’s presidency.
They alleged Mr. Tinubu was convicted of drug-related crimes and forfeited $46,000 in the US.
They also accused Mr. Shettima of being double-nominated by their party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The petitioners contended at the trial of the case that Mr. Tinubu was not duly elected by the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election.
The five-member panel of the court led by Haruna Tsammani had ordered parties to the case to exchange their final addresses at the end of the trial.
In its final written address, INEC, through its lead lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud, said Mr.
Obi’s petition “lacks merit.”
Responding to allegations of Mr. Shettima’s double nomination, Mr. Mahmoud, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said the APC had, in a letter dated July 6, 2022, received on July 13, 2022, by INEC, withdrawn his candidacy for Borno Central Senatorial District to clear the way for his nomination as Mr. Tinubu’s running mate.
He clarified that Mr. Shettima’s voluntary withdrawal preceded his nomination as Mr. Tinubu’s vice presidential pick.
Also addressing the issue of Mr. Tinubu’s alleged trafficking of narcotic drugs in the US, Mr. Mahmoud said, “There was no criminal charge, sentence, or conviction to support the allegation of criminal conviction or forfeiture,” referencing a letter from the US government tendered during the defense.
He added that “the alleged order of forfeiture, being that of a foreign court, is not registered in Nigeria to be enforceable”.
On the issue of INEC’s failure to upload polling unit results of the presidential election to its Result View Portal in real-time on February 25, Mr. Mahmoud said that electoral officers “could not transmit” the image of the results to the IReV portal “due to the technical glitch that occurred on the e-transmission application hosted by Amazon Web Services… this technical glitch… was eventually resolved.”
INEC‘s sole witness had, during his testimony, tendered the Amazon Cloud Trail in support of the claim that there was a technical glitch on the commission’s portal during the Presidential poll.
Mr. Mahmoud said the evidence of INEC’s sole witness, Lawrence Bayode, an assistant director at the commission’s ICT department, “was uncontroverted.”
Mr. Bayode stated during his testimony that he was one of the people who designed the INEC e-transmission system and helped resolve the technical glitch that occurred on election day.
“Petitioners neither pleaded nor demonstrated at trial any unlawful votes of the 2nd respondent (Mr. Tinubu) to be discounted from the computed scores of the parties.
“… And did not present any lawful vote to be added to their own. This clearly shows…failure to lead any evidence to support the same.”
25 percent of votes in FCT
On Mr. Obi’s contention that Mr. Tinubu ought not to be declared the winner of the election for failing to score 25 percent of lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the presidential election, the commission said, “This clearly has nothing to do with lawful votes or unlawful votes.”
It noted that the issue “is clearly one of interpretation of the relevant constitutional provisions.”
Mr. Mahmoud added in INEC’s final address that Mr. Obi failed to “lead credible evidence” to aid his case.
He said there was no “mandatory obligation prescribed by the Electoral Act” for INEC “to electronically transmit and collate results of the election… or to fully upload same on IReV before collation of results.”
In the court filing dated July 14, Mr. Mahmoud said, “The evidence presented by the petitioners (Mr. Obi and LP) failed to make out a case that the 2nd and 3rd respondents are not qualified to contest the election.
“Section 134(2) of the constitution only requires a candidate to have scored the highest number of votes cast and at least one-quarter of the votes cast in two-thirds of all the States in the federation and the FCT as an aggregate of 37 States.
“The petition for want of evidence deserves to be dismissed, and accordingly, dismiss the same.”
