Four presidential candidates on Tuesday approached the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, seeking the nullification of the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress as winner of the February 25 presidential poll.
The petitioners include Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party; Peter Obi of Labour Party; Solomon Okangbuan of Action Alliance and Allied People’s Movement’s Chichi Ojei.
Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party came second with 6,984,520 votes; while Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes.
The petition by Obi and LP, marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, had INEC, Tinubu, his running mate, Shettima Kashim, and the APC as respondents.
Obi contended that Tinubu “was not duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.”
Obi claimed there was rigging in 11 states, adding that he would demonstrate this in the declaration of results based on the uploaded results.
The petition read, “The petitioners shall show that in the computation and declaration of the result of the election, based on the updated results, the votes recorded for the second respondent (Tinubu) did not comply with the legitimate process for the computation of the result and disfavoured the petitioners in the following states: Rivers, Lagos, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Imo, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Plateau and other states of the federation.’’
Obi and LP said INEC violated its own regulations when it announced the result despite the fact that at the time of the announcement, the totality of the polling unit results had yet to be fully scanned, uploaded and transmitted electronically as required by the Electoral Act.
Among other prayers, the petitioners urged the tribunal to “determine that, at the time of the presidential election held on February 25,, 2023, the second and third respondents (Tinubu and Shettima) were not qualified to contest the election.”
The petitioners are also asking the tribunal for an order cancelling the election and compelling INEC to conduct a fresh election in which Tinubu, Shettima and APC shall not participate.
The tribunal has yet to fix a date for the hearing of the petition filed by the petitioners’ lead counsel, Livy Ozoukwu
