Tribunal Dismisses PDP, LP, APM Petitions, Affirms Tinubu, APC Winners Of Presidential Poll

The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal Court in Abuja, affirmed the election of President Bola Almed 

 Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), after dismissing separate petitions filed by Peoples Democratic Party, Labour Party and Allied Peoples Movement  against the declaration of the president as wiinner of the poll 

The Justice Haruna Tsammani led five member Tribunal in its more than eleven hours  ruling, on Wednesday, also held that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was right to return Tinubu as the duly elected by majority of lawful votes cast in the February 25, 2023 poll

, The Tribunal in its ruling , said that the petitioner — the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar —  did not successfully prove the allegations against this ground and indeed all the grounds in their petition.

 “This petition accordingly lacks merit. I affirm the return of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The parties are to bear their cost.”

The court also expunged 37 exhibits tendered by the witnesses from the court’s records.

On the issue of dumping of documents on the court, he held that this would only go to the weight to be attached to such evidence.

On the issue of Tinubu’s conviction and the issue of his dual citizenship, the Tribunal again held like it earlier did that this issues were incompetent and liable to be struck out and same were indeed struck out.

The Tribunal had earlier struck out petition of the Labour Party and it's presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on the ground that the petition lacked merit in its entirety, since the party failed to convince the panel of judges that tnere irregularities in the election and that the LP scored the majority of lawful votes without evidences to support the party's arguement 

Also the evidences of the 10 out of the 13 witnesses presented by the Labour Party were outrightly rejected by the court, since could not prove to the judgement their claims of criminal convinction of the APC candidate for drug offence  by a court in the United States to warrant his disquificatjon from the presidential poll

The court dismissed party's argument against INEC for not offloading the results of the election through BVAS to the portal, saying INEC is at liberty to choose what ever method to collate the results as contained in the electoral act,  not necessarily electronic transmission of the results 

Similarly the court struck out the petition by the  Allied Peoples Movement, asking the court to disqualify the joint ticket of the APC on the ground that the vice president was at the time of his nomination as Vice-Presidential Candidate was having dual candidatire as Borno Central Senatorial Candidate of APC 

But the Tribunal ruled that the Vice President, Kashim Shetima personally withdrew his Senitorial candidate and immediately replaced by his party