Judgment Day – Presidential Election Petitions.
We summarise the legal arguments made by the leading opposition candidates in the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal cases
It’s Judgment Day tomorrow.
The Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal has confirmed that the judgment in the petitions before the Presidential Election Petition court will be delivered on Wednesday 6th September 2023. The judgment of the court will be televised live.
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For some who may not know, there are 3 petitions before the court. The two popular ones – Atiku and Peter Obi, and the third not so popular by the Allied Peoples Movement.
So, today’s we will be doing a recap of two of the three petitions filed against INEC and its declared winner of the presidential elections.
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Peter Obi v INEC
The Grounds of Peter Obi (Preliminary Objection’s PO election petition challenge
Ground 1 – That BAT was ineligible to contest the election because:
His vice-presidential nominee – Kashim Shettima, was still the Senatorial candidate for the Borno Central constituency at the time of his nomination.
He only withdrew his candidacy a day after he was nominated.
PO is arguing that since Shettima was nominated in Borno central constituency, and then nominated in the ‘Nigeria’ constituency (regarding the VP nomination), this is multiple nomination and therefore his nomination as VP is void, and therefore since his nomination was invalid, it taints the candidacy of BAT – and so he was therefore ineligible to contest the election.
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That BAT was charged and fined $460,000 for an offence committed in the USA involving dishonesty – narcotics trafficking in 1993, and a decree of forfeiture was ordered against him, and based on this was ineligible to run for the office of President.
Ground 2 – The election was invalid by reason of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022.
PO’s argument here is that INEC based on the guidelines it issued were meant to do two key things: (i) Use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for accreditation, verification, confirmation, and authentication of voters. (ii) use the BVAS to upload a scanned copy of the result sheets (Form EC8A) and electronically transmit the result of the polling unit directly to the collation system and the result viewing portal (IReV) in real time.
PO argued that the uploading of the results was not done, which gave room for manipulation of the results, and therefore due to non-compliance with the regulations by INEC (which they set themselves) by failing, refusing and neglecting to instantly transmit and upload the result of the election electronically to the IReV from the BVAS, INEC did not comply with the election provisions.
PO further argued that INEC has refused to comply with the order of the courts to make available the election records in its custody.
Specifically, they have denied having any Forms EC6A and EC8B from Rivers State; in Bayelsa they only provided Form EC8A in 4 out of 8 Local Government Areas, and Forms EC8B in 7 Local Government Areas; they provided all the forms for Benue State; but then refused to provide forms for all the remaining 33 states and the FCT.
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Finally, PO alleges that INEC failed to record the quantity, serial numbers and other particulars of results sheets, ballot papers and other sensitive electoral materials – as required by law to be recorded, in the States that BAT won.
Ground 3 – BAT was not duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the election.
PO alleges that not only did BAT not score the highest number of votes; he also did not get at least one quarter of the votes cast at the election in the Federation and the FCT Abuja as constitutionally required.
Atiku v INEC
In the petition filed by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (AAA) against INEC, as you would imagine there are a number of common arguments being made against the declaration of BAT as the winner in the elections as were made in PO’s petition.
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AAA and his legal team argue the point about the FCT 25% requirement, they also argue the point about INEC not uploading the election results into IReV as required by the law (and INEC guidelines), and finally they also argue the point about widespread corruption.
Alleging that INEC engaged in corrupt practice and intentionally suppressed the votes in many locations, and specifically gave the instance of Sokoto, Kano, Kogi, Lagos, Rivers State; with instances of intimidation and harassment, destruction of electoral material, mutilation of result sheets, etc.
AAA and his legal team do however did make one key new argument which PO did not/could not make.
Margin of Lead
AAA alleges that the difference in votes between himself and BAT as announced by INEC is 1,810,206 votes, and that elections were cancelled and did not hold in certain polling units across the country, and if one were to add the total number of PVCs in those polling units, that is more than the margin. AAA is therefore arguing that if the cancelled elections were held, he still had a mathematical possibility to win, and therefore the announcement of the results by INEC was premature and therefore invalid.
One thing to point out in AAA’s case is that although he does mention that BAT was ineligible to contest in the election, he curiously does not make any reference to any of the arguments made by PO. No reference to the issue of Shettima’s ineligibility, and no reference to BAT’s alleged drug case, he just says he was not qualified to contest – with no supporting argument as to why he is making that assertion.
DID YOU KNOW?
Potential Outcomes
Broadly speaking there are 3 potential outcomes of an election petition. The first outcome is that the tribunal/court upholds the election, the second outcome is the election is nullified and a new election is ordered, and the final one is that the election decision is rejected and the person who won the election is removed and the petitioner (the person who filed the petition) is installed as the winner of the election
If the Court has determined that the election is invalid, then, and new election ordered, then this shall be held by the Commission not be later than three months from the date of the judgment.
The Stage is set
Now that you have had a refresh of the arguments by the opposition candidates, you can sit back, relax, and listen to the judgments that will be read by the courts live on air tomorrow.
Thank you for reading!
Best Regards,
Lawpadi
