How the S’Court judgment floored Atiku, Obi, birthing Tinubu’s Nigeria

By DailyTimesNGR

27 October 2023

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BY ANDREW OROLUA

President Bola Tinubu yesterday floored the Presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi as the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed his 25 February, 2023 election victory.

A seven-man panel of Justices of the apex court, headed by Justice Inyang Okoro, said in its judgment that President Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) actually won the election as declared by both the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and first affirmed by the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC).

The INEC had on March 1, 2023 declared Tinubu the winner of the hotly contested poll with 8,794,726 votes to defeat his two major rivals, Atiku Abubakar, more popularly known simply as Atiku, who came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.

Dissatisfied with the announcement, Atiku and Obi approached the PEPC with petitions praying the court to nullify Tinubu’s result and declare them as winner or nullify the entire election.

Unfortunately for Atiku and Obi, PEPC dismissed their petitions for lack of merit.

Further dissatisfied with the decision, both Atiku and Obi, alongside their parties, lodged further appeals at the Supreme Court.

Delivering the lead judgement, Justice Okoro held that there was no merit in both petitions filed by Atiku and Obi that sought to nullify the outcome of the election.

He held that Atiku did not prove that INEC did not substantially comply with provisions of the Electoral Act, in the conduct of the election.

Appellants failed to prove non-compliance to Electoral Act

According to the apex court, Section 185(1) of the Evidence Act provided that an election should not be liable to be invalidated, when alleged non-compliance did not substantially affect the outcome of an election.

The Supreme Court said that evidence contained in the record of the appeal showed that the appellants abandoned the duty imposed on them by the law to not only prove the alleged non- compliance, but establish that failure of INEC to transmit results of the election through its IReV portal influenced the outcome of the presidential poll.

The Supreme Court noted that it had in past judgments, made it clear that there was a difference between election result collation system and the IReV portal.

“Where the IReV portal fails, it does not stop the collation which up till the last election was manually done,” Justice Okoro held.

S’Court slams INEC

However, the court pointed out that INEC’s failure to electronically transmit results of the election denied the electorate the opportunity to follow and cross-check results that were eventually uploaded.

“Truth must be told, the non-transmission of results to the IReV portal may also reduce the confidence of the voting population in the electoral process,” the Supreme Court asserted.

The Supreme Court further held that the inability of the electoral body to transmit election results to INEC’s IReV portal “for whatever reason, could not be the reason for an election to be nullified.”

The apex court held that Atiku and PDP did not prove that they suffered any miscarriage of justice as a result of the dismissal of their petition by the PEPC.

Apex court’s position on 25% in FCT

Justice Okoro also said that Atiku and Obi’s contention that Tinubu ought not have been declared winner of the presidential election, having failed to secure 25% votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was misconceived and misplaced because FCT has no special status above 36 States of the federation.

The apex court upheld the PEPC’s decision striking out the evidence of some of the witnesses that testified for Atiku at the PEPC hearing as “inadmissible hearsay” evidences.

“The Appellants did not present any evidence to warrant the interference of the findings of the lower court,” Justice Okoro added.

Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460,000 in US drug-related matter

On the issue that President Tinubu was involved in a drug-related case in the USA that led to the forfeiture of $460, 000, the Supreme Court held that Atiku raised the issue when the respondents had already filed their process.

That process denied the respondents the right to fair hearing.

“The ruling of the lower court is unassailable and this court will not interfere,” he held.

The Supreme court held that whereas Atiku alleged that the result that was declared by INEC was not accurate, he left the court without an alternative result as he failed to provide his perceived rightful result.

It held that the result announced by INEC was presumed as correct in the absence of “any rival or alternative result.”

“The figure before us shows that the 2nd Respondent won the highest number of votes and was duly declared winner,’ he stated.

The court, by the pronouncements, had resolved all the seven issues raised in the appeal.

“On the whole, having resolved all the issues against the Appellants, it is my view that there is no merit in this appeal and it is hereby dismissed,” Justice Okoro asserted.

Other members of the panel, Justices Uwani Abaji, Lawal Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Adamu Jauro, Tijani Abubakar, and Justice Emma Agim, agreed with the lead judgment.

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