By Mary John
The Supreme Court has affirmed the victory of President Bola Tinubu at the 2023 presidential elections held in February. The ruling which was held on Thursday, 26th October 2023, was led by a seven-judge panel, presided by Justice Inyang Okoro.
The panel unanimously dismissed all the petitions submitted by the petitioners on the basis of “lacking merit”, thereby affirming the previous judgment of the lower court on the case.
The appeal was filed by PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi who had earlier presented petitions against the National Electoral Commission, thereby challenging the outcome of the presidential election process. Their petition consisted of cases relating to suppression of votes, multiple thumbprinting of ballot papers, entering of wrong scores and disruption of the voting process in various polling units.
However, in response to these allegations, the Supreme Court compared the evidence to the petition presented and found them (the evidence) “inadmissible”.
“The petitioners pleaded in paragraph four of the petition that petitioners had agents in all the polling units, ward collation centers, local government collation centers, and all the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, as well as the national collation centers. Of this crowd of agents, the petitioners did not call any of their agents at the polling units. The same agents at the polling units were the ones who were meant to sign and collect duplicate results from the ECLA. The few agents called were state and national agents. Largely their testimonies were hearsay,” Justice Okoro said during the ruling.
The panel further explained that agents did not give particulars on these practices reported, nor was there a provision of forensic report to support the allegation of thumb printing at the polling units. They concluded that the polling agents presented in the petition are “not shown to be experts”, and that the issue of their analyzing results of the election at the ward, local government, and national level, without calling polling unit agents who witnessed the real casting of votes and events at the voting unit were inadmissible.
The panel also rejected Atiku’s appeal which sought the presentation of Tinubu’s credentials obtained from CSU, tagging it “frivolous vexation.”
The judgment conclusively dismisses the legal disputes surrounding the validity of President Tinubu’s election and puts to rest the petitions of the petitioners.
In response to the verdict, President Tinubu has expressed his excitement with the promise to exceed expectations.
“With deep gratitude to God Almighty, I solemnly and humbly accept today’s judicial victory with an intense sense of responsibility and a burning desire to meet the great challenges confronting our people,” the president said.
