Atiku, Obi tell the Supreme Court Abuja cannot be the 37th state

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), both of whom were seeking to overturn President Bola Tinubu’s election, yesterday filed separate appeals with the Supreme Court.

In their appeals, the two candidates asked the Supreme Court to overturn the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which declared Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, as the victor of the presidential election held on February 25.

In particular, they claimed that Tinubu did not receive at least 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT, Abuja. They also claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, purposefully refused to transmit the election results electronically to its portal in accordance with its rules.

In addition, they said that despite their strong evidence, the PEPC had ignored their allegations of poll manipulation and election law violations.

In contrast to Atiku, who used a team of 67 attorneys, including 18 Senior Advocates of Nigeria, under the leadership of Chief Chris Uche, SAN, to challenge Tinubu’s victory, Obi used his own legal team, under the direction of Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, to file 51 grounds for appeal with the Supreme Court.

In particular, Atiku argued in his appeal that the Court of Appeal’s decision to reject his petition challenging the results of the presidential election on September 6 was not only “against the weight of the evidence” but also resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice against him.

Even though evidence was presented to the PEPC panel demonstrating that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, violated the laws and regulations governing the conduct of elections, the former vice president insisted that the PEPC panel committed a legal error by failing to declare the presidential election invalid on the grounds of non-compliance with the Electoral Act, 2022.

He claimed that the Electoral Act of 2022 and the 1999 Constitution, as amended, were both grossly misconstrued and misrepresented in the PEPC’s majority ruling.

In his own words, “The lower court erred in law when it refused to uphold the mandatoriness of electronic transmission of results for confirmation and verification of final results introduced by the Electoral Act 2022 for transparency and integrity of results in accordance with the principles of the Act.”

willful disregard for election regulations

The use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, machines for electronic transmission of election results directly from the polling places to INEC’s collation system for the verification, confirmation, and collation of results before announcement was argued to be required by Sections 64(4) and (5) of the Electoral Act as well as INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of the Election, which he offered as evidence.

Atiku testified before the PEPC that some of the presiding officers who personally handled the BVAS machines at polling places on election day “confirmed the non-transmission of the results of the presidential election electronically from the BVAS machines, whereas results of the National Assembly election that was held simultaneously, were electronically transmitted without difficulty.”

“The bypassing of the use of the prescribed verification technology was nationwide, affecting the entire polling units and collation of results all over Nigeria, and substantially affected the outcome of the election,” Atiku continued.
The e-transmission of results’ bug was not explained by INEC.

Furthermore, he informed the court that Lawrence Bayode, INEC’s lone witness, had admitted that the Commission had encountered a technical issue that prevented the system from functioning on election day, “which technical issue was not explained by the 1st Respondent.”

In addition, he claimed that because the INEC regulations and recommendations were an immediate byproduct of the Constitution itself and thus qualified as subsidiary legislation under Section 169(1) of the Constitution and Section 148 of the Electoral Act, they possessed the legal force of law.

Atiku informed the supreme court that there was widespread non-compliance with the Electoral Act, affecting 176,846 voting locations across the nation. He claimed that this scenario had a significant impact on the election’s outcome.

The appeals court stated, “The case of the appellants was that under the new legal regime of technology-based results collation under the Electoral Act 2022, the appellants, by credible evidence, established deliberate non-compliance by the 1st Respondent with the electronic transmission of election results which was nationwide.”

The justified expectation doctrine

According to him, the election’s results should have been nullified “based on the doctrine of legitimate expectation.”

Abuja is not the 37th state; the FCT 25% threshold is obligatory.

Atiku contended that the constitutional requirement of one-fourth of the votes cast in two-thirds of the states and the FCT, Abuja, was an additional and necessary requirement to the clauses relating to the highest lawful votes and was, therefore, a prerequisite to an INEC declaration.

“In light of the unambiguous provisions of sections 2(2) & 3(1) of the 1999 Constitution, the said FCT, Abuja, cannot be regarded as the 37th state of Nigeria, as done by the lower court.

“The lower court did not properly interpret the crucial word ‘AND’ in the aforementioned sub-section, as required by law.

A presidential contender must receive at least 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, according to the explicit language of Section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution.

“There is no ambiguity or absurdity in the provision of Section 134 (2) (b) of the Constitution to warrant a resort to any other interpretation other than the literal rule as the lower court erroneously did,” Atiku added in the appeal he filed alongside his party, the PDP.

Therefore, the appellants asked the supreme court to accept the appeal, overturn the PEPC’s decision, and grant either their primary or secondary reliefs.

Among other things, he asked the Supreme Court to rule that Tinubu was not legitimately elected by a majority of the valid votes cast in the election and to rule that he was ineligible to be proclaimed the victor.

As an alternative to asking the court to certify him as the legitimate winner of the election and order his inauguration as president, Atiku asked the court to order a run-off between him and Tinubu or to throw out the results of the election altogether and direct INEC to hold a new one. INEC, Tinubu, and the APC were named as respondents in the appeal.

Third-place finisher in the presidential election Obi argued in his own appeal that the PEPC panel’s denial of his petition was legally incorrect and that this led it to draw the incorrect conclusion.

He claimed that the panel incorrectly assessed the proof of evidence he presented and caused a serious injustice by holding that he did not identify the polling places where election irregularities had place.

Obi and the LP also criticised the PEPC for rejecting their claim since they failed to provide specifics regarding the numbers of votes or scores that were purportedly tampered with or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the APC.

When the Justice Tsammani-led panel invoked paragraphs 4(1)(d)(2) and 54 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022 to strike out portions of the petition, they similarly charged the panel with violating the law.

Obi asserted that the evidence of his witnesses was incorrectly rejected as being incompetent while charging the lower court with violating his right to a fair hearing.

He claimed that the panel had wrongfully rejected his claim that INEC had submitted 18, 088 blurred results on its IReV platform.

Furthermore, Obi claimed that the lower court disregarded his claim that the certified true copies of documents that INEC gave to his legal team contained 8, 123 blurred results that claimed to be the CTC of polling unit results for the presidential election but actually contained blank A4 papers, pictures, and images of unknown people.

“The learned justices of the court below erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when they held and concluded that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practises and over-voting,” continued Obi.

INEC circumvented its e-transmission rules.

He argued that it was improper for the lower court to reject his argument that INEC violated its own rules by refusing to electronically transmit election results from polling places to the IReV by relying on the legal doctrine of estoppel.

“The petitioners introduced reliable and substantial evidence, both oral and written, that demonstrated the Respondents’ flagrant violations of the Electoral Act of 2022 in the course of the election.

The Appellants claimed that “the court below overlooked that the Respondents failed to disprove the evidence of substantial non-compliance adduced by the petitioners,” and that the panel had incorrectly dismissed the claim of double nomination made against Kashim Shettima, Tinubu’s vice president. Tinubu was charged with narcotics offences and given a $460,000 fine.

Obi further maintained that the PEPC disregarded information showing that President Tinubu had previously been charged with a crime and fined $460,000 in the USA for his involvement in a drug-related matter.

In his appeal, Obi added, “Imposition of a fine is not limited to a criminal conviction, as the word, in law, includes a civil forfeiture.”

The Labour Party stated in a statement released yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, said it had decided to appeal Tinubu’s election to the Supreme Court because it believed that the lower court had committed legal and factual errors in reaching the judgment’s conclusions.

Ifoh stated: “The 51 grounds are considered a legal mistake as the party’s legal team intends to demonstrate that Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate, did not win the election and that it was incorrect for both INEC and the PEPC to declare him the winner of the election when many unmistakable facts were proving otherwise.

“Obi and the Labour Party are asking the Supreme Court to rule on four important issues: Allow the appeal, overturn the unfair PEPC ruling, and grant the reliefs requested in the petition, either in full or in part.

Obi and the Labour Party outlined the specifics of the PEPC’s miscalculation in relation to the 25% threshold for Abuja as follows:

“That the PEPC failed to understand that the President is also required to secure 25% of the votes cast in the FCT in order to assume the office or position of President.

They further charged the PEPC with ignoring Section 299’s entire intent, which would be more obvious upon calmly examining Section 301 of the Constitution.