The Supreme Court yesterday affirmed President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the valid winner of the presidential election that held in the country on February 25, 2023.
\nThe apex court, in a unanimous decision by a seven-member panel of Justices, held that there was no merit in the petition that a former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, filed to nullify the outcome of the election.
\nThe seven Justices also unanimously dismissed the appeal filed by the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, for lack of merit.
\nThe seven-member panel led by its chairman, Justice John Inyang Okoro, include Justices Uwani Aji, Mohammed Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Adamu Jauro, Abubakar Tijjani and Emmanuel Agim.
\nIn its lead judgment that was prepared and read by Justice Okoro, the Supreme Court held that Atiku did not prove that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), did not substantially comply with provisions of the Electoral Act, in the conduct of the election.
\nThe apex court held that 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.
\nIt held 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 to establish that the failure of INEC to transmit results of the election through its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) influenced the outcome of the presidential poll.
\nThe Supreme Court said it had in past judgements, made it clear that there was a difference between election result collation system and the IReV portal.
\nIt, therefore, ruled that the failure of the INEC to transmit the election results on the IReV Portal did not affect the outcome of the election.
\n\u201cWhere the IReV portal fails, it does not stop the collation which up till the last election was manually done,\u201d the court held.
\nIt further held that the unavailability of results on INEC\u2019s IReV portal \u201cfor whatever reason, could not be the reason for an election to be nullified\u201d.
\nOkoro said, \u201cWhen IReV fails, it does not stop the collation of the results. It deprives people of viewing results. The non-function will affect the trust of the electorates in the election.
\n\u201cUnavailability of IReV cannot be a ground for the election to be nullified.
\n\u201cThe failure did not affect the outcome of the election. The issue is resolved against the appellants.\u201d
\nNevertheless, it stressed that INEC\u2019s failure to electronically transmit results of the election denied the electorates the opportunity to follow and cross-check results that were eventually uploaded.
\n\u201cTruth 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,\u201d the Supreme Court warned.
\nThe apex court also described as misconceived and misplaced, Atiku\u2019s 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, Abuja.
\nThe apex court affirmed the position of the PEPC that the FCT does not have a status that is more special than that of the 36 States of the federation.
\nAccording to Justice Okoro, scoring 25% votes in the FCT, Abuja is not mandatory and cannot stop INEC from declaring a presidential candidate who scored the highest number of votes and 25 percent in two-thirds of the States, the winner of the election.
\nThe presiding Justice asked, \u201cAre you saying if someone scores 25% votes in 30 states but not in Abuja, he should not be president? Is that how you interpret the law?
\n\u201cThat is not the law. Supreme Court agrees with the Court of Appeal,\u201d he added.
\nThe apex court also supported the judgment of the tribunal for striking out witnesses of Atiku Abubakar\u2019s testimonies on manipulation in the election, adding that most of the witnesses gave \u201cinadmissible hearsay\u201d evidence
\nDescribing Atiku\u2019s witnesses\u2019 testimonies as \u201chearsay\u201d, Okoro said, \u201cA political party can\u2019t appoint an octopus agent who will be at every polling unit on election day.
\n\u201cAtiku\u2019s agents can only testify in their polling units where they witnessed what they saw, but not across the country where they were not present.
\n\u201cI adopt the decision of the lower court which is in line with a plethora of precedents. The witnesses\u2019 testimonies were hearsay.
\n\u201cThe finding of the lower court in discountenancing the Atiku\u2019s witnesses cannot be faulted.\u201d
\nHe added that \u201cThe Appellants did not present any evidence to warrant the interference of the findings of the lower court\u201d.
\nOn 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 Tinubu raised the issue when the Respondents had already filed their process.
\nIt held that the action denied the Respondents the right to fair hearing.
\n\u201cThe ruling of the lower court is unassailable and this court will not interfere,\u201d it held.
\nThe apex court also dismissed the the certificate forgery allegation pleaded against Tinubu by Atiku, saying the court cannot entertain fresh evidence that was not pleaded or presented at the Court of Appeal.
\nIt also 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 Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
\nThe court held that whereas Atiku alleged that the result that was declared by INEC was not accurate, he, however, failed to put forward their perceived rightful result.
\nIt held that the result announced by INEC was presumed as correct in the absence of \u201cany rival or alternative result.\u201d
\n\u201cThe figure before us shows that the 2nd Respondent won the highest number of votes and was duly declared winner.\u201d
\nConsequently, the court, resolved all the issues that Atiku raised in his petition, against him.
\n\u201cOn 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.
\n\u201cJudgement of the lower court delivered on September 6 is hereby affirmed. I shall make no order as to cost,\u201d the Supreme Court held.
\nThe Supreme Court also dismissed as lacking in merit, the appeal the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, filed to nullify President Bola Tinubu\u2019s election.
\nAlso in a unanimous decision by a seven-member panel of Justices, the apex court held that Obi\u2019s appeal deserved to be dismissed.
\nIn the lead judgement that was delivered by Justice Okoro, the court held that the issues Obi raised in his case were already decided in a separate appeal that was filed by the PDP candidate, Atiku.
\nJustice Okoro noted that the only distinct issue that Obi raised in his appeal, was the issue that the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, had double nominations from the APC.
\nThe court held that it had earlier decided the issue on May 26, in an appeal marked: SC\/CV\/501\/2023.
\n\u201cThis court cannot allow the matter to be relitigated in this court. There must be an end to litigation. This matter ought not to have come here.
\n\u201cThe appeal lacks merit and it is accordingly dismissed,\u201d the apex court held.
\nIt will be recalled that INEC had on March 1, announced that Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, won the presidential contest, ahead of 17 other candidates that participated in the poll.
\nIt declared that he garnered a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his two major rivals, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, who came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.<\/p>\n
By: Boye Salau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court yesterday affirmed President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the valid winner of the presidential election that held in the country on February 25, 2023. The apex court, in a unanimous decision by a seven-member panel of Justices, held that there was no merit in the petition that a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":324131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-324129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=324129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324132,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324129\/revisions\/324132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/324131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=324129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=324129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=324129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}