Feb Polls: PEPC clears Tinubu, Shettima, INEC of all allegations

Sopuruchi Onwuka

The growing fear of all aggrieved parties in the February presidential elections at today’s rulings at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) have morphed into total despondency following a clean swipe of all cases concluded today in favour of incumbent President Bola Tinubu.

 Not a single reprieve was granted the petitioners whose cases were decided today, lending credence to utterances from the camps linked to the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) that all complaints against the president would be in vain.

In the declaration of its rulings today, the court had fired off the first signal when it summarily threw out the petition of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) against the All Progressives Congress’ (APC’s) Vice Presidential candidate and current Vice President, Kashim Shettima for having been a double nominee during the party’s primary election.

The APM had petitioned against the process that produced Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate, saying that it was in breach of the Electoral Act which forbids double nomination as Shettima was a senatorial candidate at the time he was nominated as Tinubu’s running mate.

In the first petition to be decided, Chairman of the Court, Justice Tsammani Haruna Tsammani, threw out the petition of the APM for being incompetent. Justice Tsammani held that the case against Shettima’s qualification to run as APC presidential candidate’s running mate was a pre-election matter which ought to have been filed within 14 days at the Federal High Court after the emergence of Shettima as Vice Presidential Candidate of the APC.

In throwing out the petition for lacking merit, Justice Tsammani also faulted the position of the APM in the candidate nomination process of the APC, noting that the APM could only challenge Shettima’s nomination if it could show how the nomination affected it.

The PEPC also disagreed with the allegations in the petition of the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi’s that the election was rigged rigging in favour of Bola Tinubu of the APC, pointing out that Obi and the Labour Party failed to list the specific polling units where the rigging took place. 

In one of his petitions against Tinubu’s declaration as winner of the 2023 presidential election, Mr Peter Obi had claimed that 18,000 or 11% blurred polling unit levels results were uploaded on IRev. He contended that since the blurred results formed part of the scores attributed to all the candidates, including Tinubu, it would be dubious to announce a winner under such circumstance.

But in reading the judgement on the petition on Wednesday, Justice Bello said Obi and the Labour Party failed to identify the specific polling units from where the blurred results emanated, adding that the petitioner did not also present any sheet or forensic document to show the states listed in certain paragraphs on rigged polling units.

Justice Bello maintained that the obligation of proving the specificity of the rigging and where it took place rests on Mr Peter Obi and the Labour Party.

The court also rejected the reports of forensic analyses tendered by LP’s three witnesses, saying that they were either made during the pendency of the case or by an interested party. It also rejected the report of the European Union election observer mission on the argument that it was not tendered by an official of the body.

Justice Bello declared that Mr Peter Obi and the Labour Party, the petitioners, were unable to prove their case.

In a separate petition seeking to disqualify Tinubu for contesting for the position of president, the court also held that Mr Peter Obi and LP failed to prove that President Bola Tinubu was arrested in any criminal offence in the United States. The court declared that the petitioners did not produce sufficient evidence to show Bola Tinubu was arrested, convicted for money laundering or had criminal records in the United States of America.

On the seizure of $460,000 from Tinubu by the United States District Court of Illinois on allegations of narcotic trade, the PEPC also dismissed the petition as defective and unsubstantiated.

The PEPC ruled that the seizure of $460,000 being proceeds of drugs from Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the United States was not as a result of any criminal activity, because, according to Justice Haruna Tsammani, “to classify an action as fraud would require indictment, arrest and arraignment.”

In a separate petition challenging the processes adopted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the February election, the court decided that INEC was not statutorily required to use electronic devices to transmit election results.

The court led by Justice Haruna Tsammani dismissed the petitioners’claim that INEC contravened the Electoral Act by failing to upload results of the election on IReV in real time; declaring that INEC was not under any statutory mandate to send election results electronically.

“There is no provision for the electronic transmission of election results in the Electoral Act 2022,” Justice Tsammani pointed out.

In addressing the petition that the ruling APC failed to secure a mandatory 25 percent of the votes cast in 24 states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the court declared that such privileges and status do not exist for the residents of the FCT.

The Oracle Today reports that the verdicts of the PEPC left the petitioners with palpable despair, dousing predictions that the aggrieved parties and sundry interests might proceed to the Supreme Court to further challenge the controversial February election in which President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) was declared winner.

The Oracle Today reports that no court has overturned a presidential election since Nigeria’s return to democracy from military rule in 1999; but the 2023 election is different for the high level of mass awareness, participation in electronic monitoring of the process, and rapid transmission of information by observers.