In an effort to have his election victory overturned, PDP candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar filed an appeal, which President Bola Tinubu has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss.
Tinubu pleaded with the Supreme Court in a 42-page brief of argument on Thursday to uphold what he called the “well-considered decision of the Court of Appeal,” which had on September 6 dismissed the joint petition Atiku and his party had filed against him while the Court of Appeal was acting as the Presidential Election Petition Court, or PEPC.
The case was presented by Tinubu’s 17-person legal team, which also comprised 10 Senior Advocates of Nigeria.
Tinubu said the supreme court that statistics showed he received 25% of the total votes cast in the 29 states of the federation, and he insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, appropriately pronounced him the winner of the presidential election that was held on February 25.
He argued in court that the former vice president and the PDP only managed to win 25% of the votes cast overall in 21 federation states, “as against the statutory limit of 24.7 states, which is the mathematical results of two-thirds of the 36 federation states and the FCT (making 37)”.
He testified before the supreme court that Atiku and the PDP approached the PEPC on March 21 “on fabricated allegations of non-compliance with provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, corrupt practices, non-scoring of majority of lawful votes cast at the election and non-qualification of the Respondent” because they were unhappy with the election’s outcome.
President Tinubu continued, “The petition itself, which had no facts in support thereof, showed the hyperbolic nature of the foregoing charges.
Starting with the accusation of non-qualification of the Respondent, all the Appellants offered to the lower court in their petition was the claim that Tinubu, the second Respondent, was ineligible to run for office at the time of the election because he did not meet the constitutional threshold.
“Throughout their petition, they did not propose a different score that they believed to be accurate, whether for themselves or the Respondent, despite the fact that they also claimed to have received the greatest number of votes cast in the election, contrary to INEC’s pronouncement.
“Although they claimed that there were several instances of non-compliance and corrupt behavior during the election, the petition’s paragraphs making these claims were incredibly ambiguous, imprecise, general, and fuzzy.
While Atiku highlighted the problem of results not being sent, President Tinubu testified before the Supreme Court that all the witnesses he presented to the PEPC “agreed that the election went very smoothly, where INEC complied with all the prescribed procedures.”
He therefore pleaded with the Supreme Court to reject Atiku’s appeal as “lacking in merit and to affirm the election and return of the Respondent by INEC as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, having scored the highest number of lawfully cast votes and fulfilling all constitutional requirements.”
