The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, have asked the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) to reject President Bola Tinubu’s and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) invitation to subvert Nigerians’ will by dishonestly upholding the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
In their final written address to the PEPC, the petitioners implored the court not to turn a blind eye to constitutional infractions that characterised the disputed election, as doing so would be a dereliction of duty.
In their joint final address filed on July 20, 2023, the petitioners accused the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) of failing to comply with the requirement of the law by refusing to provide them with certified copies of the ‘top copies(Electoral operations’ copies’) of the Forms EC8A in the polling unit under paragraph 39 of the regulations and guidelines.
Lead counsel to the petitioners, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN) who filed the document said; “apart from the blatant refusal to comply with the mandatory requirements of the law, the certified copies of the results of the election given to the petitioners by INEC, manifestly show that the purported Forms EC8As in several polling units, were affected by mutilations, cancellations, alterations and and outright swapping of votes in favour of president Tinubu and the APC and against the petitioners.”
The senior lawyer noted that “the only excuse invented by the respondents in their reply to the petition was that the refusal to comply with specific requirement of the law to upload/transmit the results of the election using the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System(BVAS) from the polling units to the IReV was the occurrences of the alleged technological glitches on the day of the election.
They drew the attention of the court, to the fact that, “though, the presidential election was conducted same time, on the same day, at the same respective polling units with the National Assembly Elections, the result of the National Assembly elections were successfully uploaded/transmitted from the BVAS to the IReV portal.
“Strangely, only the result of the presidential election equally held in the same polling units, using the same infrastructure, could not, according to the INEC, as required by law, be uploaded/transmitted from the polling units into the IReV portal.”
Besides, the petitioners urged the court to recognize that, their expert evidence/report of the upload of blurred 18,088 polling units Forms EC8A, purported to be the result of the election was neither challenged nor controverted by the respondents.
“The blurred copies were not readable nor contain any relevant information including scores of candidates obtained in the polling units on the day of election.
” The data analysis for the 18,088 polling units being blurred copies of form EC8A, show that the total number of accredited voters in these polling units were 2, 562, 269, and 9, 165, 191 voters who collected their PVs in these polling units.”
They argued that the above figure is far more than the purported margin of the lead in the INEC announced result of the election, between Tinubu and their candidate.
On the issue of the controversial 25 percent votes in the Federal Capital Territory(FCT), Obi and his Labour Party urged to court to hold that section 134 (2) (b) of the Constitution is “clearly to the effect that a candidate to be declared a winner of the presidential election, must secure at least one-quarter (25%) of votes cast in two-thirds of the entire 36 states. Again, that candidate must also secure not less than 25% of the votes cast at the FCT, Abuja.
They contended that; ” the population of the winning candidate must extend not only to an appreaciable geographical spread, but also to the FCT being the capital city and melting pot for all Nigerians and which would truely reflect the will of all Nigerians, so that the deliberate additional constitutional requirement of 25% votes in the FCT must not be redundant.”
The petitioners equally urged the court to hold that the order of by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern division in case No: 4483 forfeiture for the funds of $460:000 in account 263226700 held by First Heritage Bank in the name of Bola Tinubu represent proceeds of narcotics trafficking, constitutes a fine, and it is in respect of an offence involving dishonest or fraud by a court.
“In conclusion, may we respectively commend to your Lordship the words on the marble of the Kenyan Supreme Court in the case of Rola Odinga & Anor, Vs Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission & Ors (2017) KESC 31 (KLR) para, 399, when in nullifying the election that returned H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta as winner of the Kenyan presidential election in 2017, ex-cathedra said:
” What the argument that the court should not subvert the will of the people. To dishonestly exercise that delegated power and to close our eyes to constitutional violations would be a dereliction of duty and we refuse to accept the invitation to do so, however popular the invitation may seem. Therefore, let the majesty of the Constitution reverberate across the lengths and breadths of our motherland; let it bubble from our rivers and Ocean; let it boomerang from our hills and mountains ”