Reports have suggested that the hearing of the petitions challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress candidate at the last general election, as the president-elect will commence on Monday.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, had on March 1 declared Tinubu the president-elect on the grounds that his party scored the majority of votes cast in the polls.
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi on Tuesday, March 21 filed his petitions to the presidential elections tribunal to challenge Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 presidential election.
Obi came third in last month’s poll behind Atiku Abubakar and victor Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.
The petition, jointly filed by Obi and his party, has INEC, Tinubu, Shettima Kashim, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the respondents.
Here are the five prayers Obi and the Labour Party seek in their petition.
Eligibility
According to petitioners, Mr. Tinubu shouldn’t have been qualified to seek the presidency.
President-elect Obi, according to lead attorney Livy Uzoukwu for Obi, “was not duly elected by the majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.”
25 % in FCT
Obi and the Labour Party want the tribunal to rule “that the 2nd Respondent (Tinubu) having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the Presidential Election in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023..
Election Cancelation
The court was also asked by Obi and his party to order the cancellation of the presidential election scheduled for February 25.
Fresh polls
The LP candidate also urged the court to order INEC to conduct afresh poll in addition to canceling the previous one.
New election without Tinubu and Shettima
Obi asked the tribunal to issue a ruling preventing Tinubu and his running mate, Shettima, from standing in the upcoming election.
Despite the constitution’s requirement that they be resolved, whenever possible, prior to a candidate being sworn into office, election disputes in Nigeria typically take months to be resolved.
Since the end of military control in 1999, this year’s election was the closest for president, but international observers complained it lacked transparency and there were
