THE NATION
•‘LP’s candidate was PDP member when he picked ticket’
•Election conducted in compliance with Electoral Act, agency insists
Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi’s petition before the Election Tribunal lacks merit, All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) submitted yesterday.
To the APC and the electoral commission, the petition, which is a waste of time, should be dismissed.
LP and Obi are challenging the victory of President-elect Bola Tinubu of APC, winner of the February 25 election, on grounds of alleged non-qualification and non-compliance, among others.
In their separate responses filed before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) last night, the APC and INEC urged the court to dismiss the petition for being unmeritorious.
They are querying the competence of the petition and the grounds on which it was premised.
APC, in its response filed at the PEPC secretariat in Abuja by Thomas Ojo, a member of the party’s legal team, led by Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), faulted the petition on many grounds.
It also challenged the court’s jurisdiction to hear the petition on the grounds that it is, among others, incompetent.
Among APC’s grounds for challenging the competence of the petition are that Obi was not a valid member of the LP as at the time of the election and the exclusion of Atiku Abubakar and his party as a party to the petition, among others.
On Obi’ s claim to being a member of the LP, the APC argued that he was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) until May 24, 2022, when he was screened as the party’s presidential aspirant in April 2023.
The APC stated that Obi participated in PDP’s screening exercise and was cleared to contest the presidential election as an aspirant.
It added: “The 1st petitioner (Obi) purportedly resigned his membership of Peoples Democratic Party on 24th May 2022 to purportedly join the 2nd petitioner (LP) on 27th May 2022.
