Atiku and Obi are challenging INEC’s declaration that Tinubu of the APC was the valid winner of the February 25 presidential election.
They are praying the apex court to set aside the September 6 judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which dismissed their petitions that the election was rigged in favour of the ruling party.
Aside from contesting President Tinubu’s eligibility to participate in the contest, both Atiku, who came second and Obi, who came third, maintained that Tinubu did not obtain the majority of valid votes cast during the election to be declared the winner.
Obi and the LP, through their team of lawyers, led by Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, urged the court to uphold their appeal and set aside the judgment of the PEPC.
Obi, in his 51 grounds of appeal, maintained that the PEPC panel erred in law and thereby reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed his petition.
He said that the panel wrongly evaluated the proof of evidence he adduced before it and occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice when it held that he did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election and the figures of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the APC.
He insisted that the PEPC overlooked evidence that established that President Tinubu was previously indicted and fined the sum of $460, 000 in the USA over his involvement in a drug-related case.
“Imposition of a fine is not limited to a criminal conviction, as the word, in law, includes a civil forfeiture,” Obi further argued in his appeal and urged the court to overturn Tinubu’s victory.
President Bola Tinubu, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, yesterday, told the Supreme Court why it should not admit as evidence Tinubu’s certificate that was released to the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, by the Chicago State University, CSU.
According to them, Atiku did not meet the requisite condition precedent to enable the apex court to admit the documents in evidence.
They spoke before the seven-man panel of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Inyang Okoro, which reserved its judgment on the appeals filed by Atiku Abubakar; and the Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, to nullify Tinubu’s election after all the parties adopted their briefs of argument.
Other members of the apex court panel that heard the matter were Justices Uwani Abba-Aji, Lawal Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Adamu Jauro, Abubakar Tijjani and Emmanuel Agim.
This happened on a day the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, withdrew its appeal against Tinubu, following the panel’s dismissal of the case as frivolous.
News Source : Vanguard News
