The Presidential Election Tribunal will make its verdict public on September 16, the deadline for judgment delivery. A reliable source disclosed this information on Sunday.
The Justice Haruna Simon Tsamani-led tribunal is set to deliver judgement on three petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP), and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), alongside their presidential candidates; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Peter Obi, and Delta-born Princess Chichi Ojei respectively. The petitions challenge the declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The defendants in the cases are Tinubu, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
During the final address, Atiku and the PDP’s lawyers urged the court to declare that President Tinubu was not qualified to contest the presidential election held on February 25. They also requested a nullification of the election outcome, and a re-run or fresh contest. Atiku and his party alleged that INEC bypassed the technological innovations introduced for the purpose of the 2023 general elections, despite receiving over N355billion for the conduct of the election.
They contended that INEC acted in breach of the amended Electoral Act, when it refused to electronically transmit the results of the presidential election.
“On the issue of transmission of election results based on new provisions in the Electoral Act, we are all in agreement, including the INEC, that there is a new regime in election management.
“The essence of the innovation was to enhance transparency in the collation of results, which was an area that we usually had problems and not the actual election, and secondly, to enhance the integrity of results declared.
“We agree that INEC had an option and we brought video evidence from the INEC Chairman showing that the electoral body indeed chose an option.
“It is our contention and it is here in evidence that witnesses admitted that results from the National Assembly election were transmitted but that of the presidential election was not.
“My lords, in a situation like this, the burden shifts on INEC to explain. It is not on the Petitioner to explain why there was such technical glitch.
“We urge this court to hold that there was a deliberate non-compliance. The substantiality of the non-compliance lies on the national spread of the non transmission of results. It was national and not limited to certain polling units,” Uche, SAN, added.
While adopting his own final brief of argument, Obi and the LP, through their lawyer, Mr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, argued that there was no glitch during the election but an intentional act to sabotage the outcome of the poll.
Uzoukwu, SAN, while calling for the removal of President Tinubu, insisted that “an election where over 18,088 blurred results were uploaded to INEC’s IReV portal, is certainly a flawed election.”
Meanwhile, all the Respondents in the two cases- INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress, APC- through their respective lawyers, prayed the court to dismiss the petitions as grossly lacking in merit.
INEC’s legal team, led by Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, maintained that the presidential election was not only validly conducted, but was done in substantial compliance with all the relevant laws.
The electoral body argued that the petitioners misconstrued and totally misunderstood the purpose of the technology it introduced for the 2023 general elections.
It told the court that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, device was introduced for the authentication and verification of voters and for transmission of results from the polling units to the IReV portal.
INEC’s lawyer said there was evidence to show that the commission went to great length to ensure that the technology functioned as designed.
“The applications used on the BVAS device were developed in-house and tested again and again, both for performance and reliability.
“The intention of the 1st Respondent to conduct a world-class election is clear from the evidence that was placed before this court,” he insisted
