PM NEWS
President Bola Tinubu has told the Supreme Court that the petition of the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, challenging his victory is nothing but a jamboree and lacking in merit.
He asked the apex court to throw out the petition.
Tinubu’s assertion was contained in a response by his lead counsel, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, to the appeal filed by Obi challenging the decision of the tribunal.
According to Tinubu, “The entire petition was nothing but a jamboree of sorts, which was prosecuted more in the media than in the courtroom and the lower court, being a court of law and not of sentiments, dutifully threw away their petition after a painstaking consideration of same.”
He said if considered from every angle, the petition is lacking in merit, substance, and good faith.
Tinubu added that unlike previous election petitions over which the Supreme Court had presided and made far-reaching pronouncements on diverse issues, including but not limited to ballot box snatching, vote buying, voters’ intimidation, interference by the military, thuggery, ballot stuffing, violence, disenfranchisement, non-recording of votes in form EC8A, which is the building block or the base of the pyramid, and such other electoral vices, this appeal arising from a dismissed petition, the main grouse of which is that, while the presidential election was peacefully conducted all over the country, and results of elections carefully and accurately recorded in the various form EC8As, some unidentified and unspecified results, even in the appellants’ brief were not uploaded electronically to the IREV portal.
The president said instructively, however, the lower court, appreciating that it is not a court of final instance, proceeded to determine the petition on its merit, while itemising several monumental failures of the petitioners to provide any evidence in support of their much-touted case…
