The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, will, today commence pre-hearing session on four petitions that are seeking to invalidate President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.
The petitioners are separately challenging the declaration of Buhari as the legitimate winner of the February 23, presidential election.
It was learnt that the tribunal has already issued pre-hearing notice on all the parties.
Basically, the session affords the tribunal the opportunity to meet the parties with a view to setting up modalities to be adopted in the actual hearing of substantive issues in dispute.
Aside the petition marked CA/PEPC/002/2019, which was entered against Buhari by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and its candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on March 18, the second petition marked CA/ PEPC/001/2019, was by the presidential candidate of the Hope Democratic Party (HDP), Chief Ambrose Owuru, who secured a total of 1,663 in the election.
While the third petition, CA/PEPC/004/2019, was lodged by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), Pastor Aminchi Habu, who is seeking a fresh election on the basis that his party’s logo was not included in the ballot paper.
The last petition, with suit No CA/PEPC/003/2019, was filed by the Coalition For Change (C4C) and its presidential candidate, Geff Chizee Ojinka, who are contending that Buhari’s re-election was vitiated by substantial non-compliance with mandatory statutory provisions.
The petitioners maintained that the irregularity substantially affected the election, “such that the 1st Respondent was not entitled to be returned as the winner of the Presidential election”.
Remarkably, unlike in all the other petitions where only Buhari, the APC and INEC were cited as Respondents, the C4C, which garnered a total of 2,391 votes at the presidential poll, cited the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, as the 2nd Respondent in its case.
It will be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had on February 27, declared that Buhari garnered a total of 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the opposition PDP, who it said polled a total of 11,262,978 votes.
However, Atiku had almost immediately the result was announced, vowed to upturn it in court.
Specifically, in their joint petition, Atiku and his party insisted that data they secured from INEC’s server, revealed that they clearly defeated Buhari with over 1.6million votes.
The petitioners alleged that INEC had at various stages of the presidential election, unlawfully allocated votes to Buhari, saying they would adduce oral and documentary evidence to show that result of the election as announced by the electoral body, did not represent the lawful valid votes cast.
Atiku alleged that in some states, INEC, deducted lawful votes that accrued to him, in its bid to ensure that Buhari was returned back to office.
The petitioners said they would call evidence of statisticians, forensic examiners and finger-print experts at the hearing of the petition to establish that the scores credited to Buhari were not the product of actual votes validly cast at the polling units.
“The Petitioners plead and shall rely on electronic video recordings, newspaper reports, photographs and photographic images of several infractions of the electoral process by the Respondents”, they added.
More so, in one of the five grounds of the petition, Atiku and the PDP maintained that Buhari was not qualified to run for the office of the President, contending that he does not possess the constitutional minimum qualification of a school certificate.
The petitioners serialised results that were recorded from each state of the federation in order to prove that the alleged fraudulent allocation of votes to Buhari and the APC, took place at the polling units, the ward collating centres, local government collating centres and the state collating centres.
They argued that proper collation and summation of the presidential election results would show that contrary to what INEC declared, Atiku garnered a total of 18,356,732 votes, ahead of Buhari, who they said, got a total of 16,741,430 votes.
“The Petitioners state that Smart Card Readers deployed by the 1st Respondent, in addition to accreditation, equally transmitted electronically, the results of voting from polling units directly to the server of the 1st Respondent.
The presiding officers of the 1st Respondent directly inputted the results from the polling units at the end of voting and transmitted directly to the server, in addition to manually taking the Form EC8As to the wards for collation.
“The 1st Respondent is hereby given notice to produce the records of results from each polling unit uploaded and transmitted electronically by officials of the 1st Respondent through Smart Card Readers to the 1st Respondent’s servers.
“The Petitioners plead and rely on the 1st Respondent’s Manual Technologies 2019, and notice is hereby given to the 1st Respondent to produce same at the trial. The 1st Respondent’s agents at the polling units used the Smart Card Reader for electronic collation and transmission of results.
“The Petitioners plead and shall rely on and play at the trial, the video demonstration by the 1st Respondent of the deployment of Smart Card Reader for authentication of accreditation and for transmission of data.
“Wherefore, the Petitioners pray jointly and severally against the Respondents as follows: ‘That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent (Buhari) was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast in the said election, and therefore, the declaration and return of the 2nd Respondent by the 1st Respondent as the President of Nigeria is unlawful, undue, null, void and of no effect.
“’That it may be determined that the 1st Petitioner (Atiku) was duly and validly elected and ought to be returned as President of Nigeria, having polled the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election to the office of the President of Nigeria held on 23rd February, 2019, and having satisfied the constitutional requirements for the said election.”
They, therefore, sought, “An order directing the 1st Respondent to issue Certificate of Return to the 1st Petitioner as the duly elected President of Nigeria.
“That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the said election.
“That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent submitted to the commission affidavit containing false information of a fundamental nature in aid of his qualification for the said election”.
In the alternative, the petitioners prayed the tribunal to nullify the February 23 presidential election and order a fresh poll.
But in a swift reaction, both Buhari and the APC, filed preliminary objections to challenge the competence of the petitions, even as they challenged Atiku’s locus-standi to even participate in the presidential poll.
In his objection, Buhari described Atiku as a serial loser, boasting that he had always defeated him in every electoral contest that both of them took part in.
Buhari insisted that the electorate always chose him ahead of Atiku in both inter-party or intra-party contests, using the 2014 presidential primaries the All Progressives Congress (APC), as an instance.
“In particular, at the primary election conducted by the 3rd Respondent (APC) in 2014, to pick its presidential candidate for the 2015 election, the 1st Petitioner and Respondent, amongst others, were the candidates; and while the respondent polled 3,430 votes, 1st petitioner came a distant third with 954 votes”.
Besides, Buhari, queried the powers of the tribunal to nullify his election victory at the poll, contending that the joint petition Atiku and the PDP entered against him was incompetent as it was based on conjectures.
Insisting that reliefs the petitioners were seeking from the tribunal were “vague, nebulous and lacking in specificity”, Buhari argued that most of the issues and grounds of the petition were not only “mutually exclusive”, but also outside the jurisdiction of the tribunal.
He contended that by virtue of Section 31(5) and (6) of the Electoral Act, 2010, as amended, only the Federal High Court or High Court of a state has jurisdiction to adjudicate on some of the issues, among which included the allegation that he was bereft of the requisite educational qualification.
Meanwhile, the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, yesterday, slated June 27 to commence hearing on a suit seeking to invalidate the election victory of President Muhammadu Buhari over allegation that he violated section 91(2) of the Electoral Act, 2010, as amended.
Justice Ahmed Mohammed had earlier ordered substituted service of the suit on President Buhari, through the All Progressives Congress, APC.
In a related development, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s confession that anger, frustration and disenchantment among the youths are responsible for the escalation of kidnapping, abduction and other crimes in the country, is a direct admission of his failure in governance.
Interpreting the confession as an indictment, PDP stated that the explanation confirms that President Buhari is aware that Nigerian youths did not vote for him in the February 23 Presidential election.
The party, in a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan said, “this self-confession by Mr President is equally an admission that he has no solutions, and points to the ugly situation that would continue to confront the nation if the stolen Presidential mandate is not retrieved in the courts.
“Is it not appalling that at a time when other world leaders are leading their youths to constructive and productive ventures and developing their nations, Nigerian youths are being pushed into situations of anger, frustration and recourse to criminality?
“Under President Buhari, our national economy has continued to slide; over 30 million Nigerians have lost their jobs and basic means of livelihood; businesses have continued to shut down; the cost of essential goods and services have persistently soared while purchasing power of citizens worsen.”
Lambasting the President over his statement that losing weight is a sign that the Inspector General of Police, Adamu Mohammed, was effectively tackling the security issues, the party pointed out that at the time President Buhari was making a joke on the security situation, bandits were having a field day in communities in Zamfara State where they reportedly killed over 50 Nigerians.
“It is more disheartening that instead of finding solutions, Mr President resorted to rhetoric and begging the question to the extent of describing criminality as a ‘new occupation and a business.’
“Moreover, Nigerians were shocked at President Buhari’s insensitivity to the victims of the bloodlettings, kidnapping, banditry and other acts of violence in the country when he trivialized and made a joke of the insecurity in the land by stating that losing weight is a sign that the Inspector General of Police, Adamu Mohammed, was effectively tackling the security issues.
“It is most heartbreaking that at the time President Buhari was making a joke on the security situation, bandits were having a field day in communities in Zamfara State where they reportedly killed over 50 Nigerians, while many more compatriots are still held hostage by kidnappers in forests in various parts of our country.
“Such attitude to governance, especially on issues that have to do with the lives of Nigerians, is completely unacceptable and must be condemned by all,” PDP said.