By Adedapo Adesanya
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the appeals filed by Mr Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party, challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election.
The seven-member panel of the court led by Justice Inyang Okoro summarily dismissed the appeals on Thursday, after first resolving all seven issues raised by Mr Abubakar in favour of Mr Tinubu.
The presiding justice of the panel, who read the lead judgement, struck down the allegation by Mr Abubakar, noting that failure to promptly upload the polling unit results of the election to IReV amounted to non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, thus, invalidating the election.
The court dismissed this argument, saying IReV was not a result collation platform, therefore failure to upload results onto it could not have invalidated the election.
The court also held that Mr Tinubu’s failure to score 25 per cent of the votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) when he had polled 25 per cent votes in 13 states did not affect his victory in the election.
The court also held that the PDP candidate failed to prove his allegation of widespread rigging during the election or that he won the election.
On the issue of the use of disparaging words by the lower court against the appellant, Mr Okoro said, “The words of the court were not meant to disparage the appellant” and did not amount to bias against the appellant as argued by their lawyers.
In Mr Obi’s case, the judge said the appeal raised substantially the same issues as Mr Abubakar’s.
The court also said in its unanimous judgement that the only different issue in Mr Obi’s appeal, which is the allegation of double nomination of Mr Kashim Shettima as vice-presidential candidate and a senatorial candidate in the February election and been earlier resolved by the court and would not be allowed to be relitigated.
Modupe Gbadeyanka