Peter Gregory Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, filed a petition, but the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal found it to be seriously flawed and beyond repair on Wednesday in Abuja.
In its decision on a number of objections raised against the petition, the Tribunal threw out a number of its paragraphs as being ambiguous, inept, inconsistent, unclear, and self-contradictory.
Obi’s petition allegedly cited a number of generic accusations of malpractice, irregularities, and corruption without being precise as required by law, according to Justice Abba Mohammed’s decision.
Obi claimed to have received the greatest number of valid votes in the February 25 presidential election, but the Tribunal determined that he had not stated or specified how many valid votes he had received.
The Labour Party’s presidential candidate argued a report from forensic specialists, but failed to submit the report with the petition or serve it on the petition’s respondents, according to Justice Mohammed, which made matters worse.
Additionally, Justice Mohammed argued that Obi’s assertion that his votes were suppressed in favour of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was ambiguous because he omitted to provide a specific number of votes to support the assertion.
The Tribunal further determined that Obi’s claims that the number of votes cast to Tinubu was inflated were unsupportable because he omitted to acknowledge it.
Regarding the claims of corrupt practises, Justice Mohammed said that not all allegations of corruption are considered to be corrupt practises. He also added that averments in a pleading must be precise and not generic, as was the case with Obi.
“The Law is very clear that where someone alleged irregularities in a particular polling unit, as in the instant petition, such a person must prove the specific irregularities in that poling unit for him to succeed in his petition,” it was decided.
The Tribunal further determined that Obi failed to provide specifics of the voting units where the complainants of irregularities were alleged and that he did not substantiate the specific polling units where elections were not held.
Details to come…
