The Supreme Court will on Monday hear separately the appeals by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) Atiku Abubakar, and his counterpart in the Labour Party, (LP) Peter Obi against the election victory of President Bola Tinubu.
The apex court communicated the date through hearing notices it sent to all the parties on Thursday.
The duo, in their appeals, are praying the apex court to set aside the judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which affirmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, as the valid winner of the presidential election that held on February 25.
Whereas Atiku, through his consortium of 67 lawyers that comprised 18 Senior Advocates of Nigeria led by Chris Uche, SAN, filed 35 grounds of appeal to challenge Tinubu’s election victory, Obi, through his own team of lawyers led by Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, filed 51 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court.
Both Atiku who came second in the election and Obi who came third, are seeking to set aside the judgement of the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the PEPC, which had on September 6, dismissed petitions they filed against Tinubu.
Specifically, Atiku, contended that the verdict of the PEPC was not only “against the weight of evidence”, but occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice against him.
The former Vice President insisted that the PEPC panel erred in law, when it failed to nullify the presidential election on the grounds of non-compliance with the Electoral Act, 2022, even when evidence showed that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, acted in breach of extant laws and regulations guiding the conduct of elections.
He accused the PEPC of reaching its unanimous decision based on gross misconstruction and misrepresentation of provisions of both the 1999 Constitution, as amended, and the Electoral Act, 2022.
According to him, “The lower court erred in law when it refused to uphold the mandatoriness of electronic transmission of results for confirmation and verification of final results introduced by the Electoral Act 2022 for transparency and integrity of results in accordance with the principles of the Act.”
He argued that sections 64(4) & (5) of the Electoral Act, as well as INEC’s Regulations & Guidelines for the conduct of the election, which he tendered in evidence, made mandatory, the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines for electronic transmission of results of the election directly from the polling units to INEC’s collation system for the verification, confirmation and collation of results before the announcement.
Atiku told the Apex court that some of the Presiding Officers who personally handled the BVAS machines at polling units on the election day had in their testimony before the PEPC, “confirmed the non-transmission of results of the presidential election electronically from the BVAS machines, whereas results of the National Assembly election that held simultaneously, were electronically transmitted without difficulty.”
“The bypass of the use of the prescribed verification technology was nationwide, affecting the entire polling units and collation of results all over Nigeria, and substantially affected the outcome of the election,” Atiku added.
More so, he told the court that INEC’s sole witness, Lawrence Bayode, admitted that the Commission experienced a technical glitch that made the system fail to work on the day of the election, “which technical glitch was not explained by the 1st Respondent.”
Besides, he argued that by virtue of section 169(1) of the Constitution and section 148 of the Electoral Act, the INEC regulations and guidelines had the force of law, being a direct product of the Constitution itself, thus, qualifying as a subsidiary legislation.
Atiku told the apex court that the non-compliance with the Electoral Act was nationwide, cutting across 176, 846 polling units in the country, a situation he said substantially affected the outcome of the election.
On the constitutional requirement of one-quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states and the FCT, Abuja, Atiku, argued that it was an additional and mandatory requirement to the provisions relating to the highest lawful votes and therefore a condition precedent to a declaration by INEC.
“The said FCT, Abuja, cannot be construed as the 37th state of Nigeria as done by the lower court in the light of the clear provisions of section 2(2) & section 3(1) of the 1999 Constitution.
“The lower court failed in its duty to interpret the material word ‘AND’ in the said sub-section.
“The provision of section 134(2) (b) of the Constitution is clear on the requirement that a presidential candidate just score at least 25% of the total votes in the FCT, Abuja.
“There is no ambiguity or absurdity in the provision of section 134 (2) (b) of the Constitution to warrant a resort the any other cannon of interpretation other than the literal rule as the lower court erroneously did,” Atiku further stated in the appeal he filed alongside his party.
He prayed the Supreme Court to among other things, hold that Tinubu was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast in the election and also declared that he was not qualified to be declared the winner.
Aside from praying the court to declare him as the authentic winner of the election and order his swearing-in as President, Atiku, in the alternative, urged the court to order a run-off between him and Tinubu or to nullify the entire poll and order INEC to conduct a fresh one.
Cited as Respondents in the appeal were INEC, Tinubu and the APC.
Meanwhile, in his own appeal, Obi argued that the PEPC panel erred in law and thereby reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed his petition.
He alleged that the panel wrongly evaluated the proof of evidence he adduced before it and occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice when it held that he did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election.
Obi and the LP further faulted the PEPC for dismissing their case on the premise that they did not specify the figures of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the APC.
They equally accused the Justice Tsammani-led panel of erring in law when it relied on paragraphs 4(1) (d) (2) and 54 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022 to strike out paragraphs of the petition.
While accusing the lower court of breaching his right to a fair hearing, Obi insisted that the evidence of his witnesses was wrongly dismissed as incompetent.
He told the apex court that the panel unjustly dismissed his allegation that INEC uploaded 18, 088 blurred results to its IReV portal.
Furthermore, Obi alleged that the lower court ignored his allegation that certified true copies of documents that INEC issued to his legal team, comprised of 8,123 blurred results that contained blank A4 papers, pictures, and images of unknown persons, purporting same to be the CTC of polling units results of the presidential election.
“The learned justices of the court below erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when they held and concluded that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practices and over-voting,” Obi added.
He said it was wrong for the lower court to rely on the legal principle of estoppel to dismiss his contention that INEC bypassed its own regulations when it refused to electronically transmit the results of the election from polling units to the IReV.
“The petitioners adduced credible and substantial evidence, both oral and documentary, that proved substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 by the Respondents in the conduct of the election.
“The court below overlooked that the Respondents failed to disprove the evidence of substantial non-compliance adduced by the petitioners,” the Appellants stated, adding that the panel wrongfully dismissed the issue of double nomination that was raised against Tinubu’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima.
Likewise, Obi insisted that the PEPC overlooked evidence that established that President Tinubu was previously indicted and fined the sum of $460, 000 in the USA over his involvement in a drug-related case.
“Imposition of a fine is not limited to a criminal conviction, as the word, in law, includes a civil forfeiture,” Obi further argued in his appeal.
Meantime, President Tinubu and the APC have since asked the apex court to dismiss the appeals which they said were bereft of merit.
President Tinubu further urged the court to reject an application that Atiku filed for permission to tender a copy of his certificate that was released by the Chicago State University in the USA.
It will be recalled that the INEC had on March 1, announced that Tinubu won the presidential contest, ahead of 17 other candidates that participated in the poll.
It declared that he garnered a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his two major rivals-Â Atiku of the PDP who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the LP, who got a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Statutorily, whereas the PEPC heard all the petitions and delivered its judgement within 180 days (September 6), on the other hand, the Supreme Court, which has 60 days, will render its verdict on or before November 4.
Similarly, while the PEPC is comprised of a five-member panel, the Supreme Court will constitute a seven-man panel to determine both Atiku and Obi’s appeals.
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