Daily Post
Three Abuja-based lawyers on Wednesday in Abuja dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before a Federal High Court seeking an order against the electoral body not to accept the nomination of Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, as presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections.
The grouse of the lawyers amongst others is that Tinubu, Atiku and Obi were unlawfully nominated by their respective political parties.
Plaintiffs in the suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/1004/2022 are Ataguba Aboje, Oghenovo Otemu and Ahmed Yusuf.
Apart from INEC other defendants in the suit instituted on June 29 are; the Attorney General of the Federation ( AGF), All Progressives Congress ( APC), People’s Democratic Party ( PDP) and Labour Party (LP) as 1st to 5th respectively.
In the suit filed on their behalf by Ataguba Aboje, the plaintiffs are contending that APC, PDP and LP contravened provisions of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act, 2022, in the conduct of the primary elections that produced their presidential candidates.
Amongst others, they are contending that the three parties flouted the law by their failure to nominate their Vice Presidential candidates before the conduct of their primary elections as required by law.
Amongst issues they want the court to determine is whether, by the provisions of Sections 131, 141 and 142 of the 1999 Constitution, the office of the Vice President of Nigeria is an elective office subject to the same qualification as the office of the President of Nigeria.
They also asked the court to determine whether by the provisions of Sections 131, 141 and 142 of the Constitution and Sections 29, 32, 84 and 152 of the Electoral Act, 2022, a candidate for an election to the office of the Vice President in Nigeria must be sponsored by a political party and whether in view of the same provisions a candidate for an election to the office of the President can be deemed to be validly nominated and declared winner of a primary election without first nominating associate from the same political party for the office of Vice President and both of them participating in the primary.
Plaintiffs further want the court to determine whether, given the same provisions of the laws, INEC can accept from a political party, the nomination of a candidate for election to the office of the President who participated alone in the primary election without nominating another candidate as an associate from the same political party to occupy the office of the Vice President…
