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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has requested the presidential election petition tribunal to dismiss the petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against the victory of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President-elect.
In their petition, the LP and Peter Obi contended that Tinubu was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast during the February 25th presidential election. They claimed that the election was marred by rigging and manipulations, and that the announcement of the results by INEC was in violation of the electoral act.
However, in its response, INEC’s counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud, argued that the reliefs sought by the petitioners were not grantable. He urged the tribunal to dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic.
Mahmoud also discredited the petitioners’ claim that Tinubu was not elected by the majority of lawful votes, stating that their prayer to declare Obi as the winner was defective for failure to join necessary parties and for lack of requisite particulars and pleading to support same.
Furthermore, INEC stated that Labour Party and Peter Obi did not have polling agents in all the polling units across Nigeria, as they only submitted a list of 134, 874 polling agents, which is 41, 972 short of the 176, 846 polling units across Nigeria.
The commission argued that Obi could not be returned as elected, “not having polled the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and/or secured one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all states in the federation and the FCT.”
The case has been adjourned until further notice.
This development has sparked mixed reactions from Nigerians, with some expressing disappointment in the LP and Peter Obi for what they see as a futile attempt to challenge Tinubu’s election. Others have criticized INEC for its handling of the election, citing reports of irregularities and violence in some parts of the country.
It remains to be seen how the tribunal will rule on the matter, but for now, Nigerians await with bated breath for the next steps in this legal battle.
