Breaking: Court overrules Tinubu, APC, consolidates Atiku, Obi’s petitions

BY Ogechi Chukwu
a year ago

ABUJA– The three different complaints that seek to overturn the results of the 2023 presidential election were combined on Tuesday by the Presidential Election Petition Court, or PEPC, which is based in Abuja.

The arguments the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, filed against the merging of the petitions were overruled by a five-member panel of the court, chaired by Justice Haruna Tsammani, in a unanimous judgment.

The court determined that as all of the claims involved the same election, it was in the interests of justice that they be merged and handled as a single petition.

As a result, it set May 30 as the date on which Mr. Peter Obi, a candidate for the Labour Party, LP, would present his argument in opposition to the results of the presidential election that took place on February 25.

Even though the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Tinubu, and the Vice President-elect, Senator Kashim Shettima, were all given five days each to respond to the petition, even though Obi had earlier stated that he would need seven weeks to present his case through 50 witnesses, the court reduced the time to three weeks in its ruling.

The court also handed Kabiru Masari, the fourth respondent in the case, three days to provide his own defense.

The court emphasized that the parties will adopt their last argument briefs on August 5 so it could set a date for judgment

Along with Obi of the LP, who finished third in the poll, and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, who came in second, the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, also filed a petition to contest the results of the presidential election.

Although Tinubu was declared the election’s winner after five petitions were initially submitted, the Action Alliance, or AA, withdrew its case on May 8 while the Action Peoples Party, or APP, followed suit two days later by also stopping further proceedings on its own petition.

The Justice Tsammani-led panel hinted that on the upcoming adjourned date, it would prohibit both attorneys and members of the public from entering the courtroom with cell phones.
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