The All Progressives Congress (APC) claims that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was unable to prove his claim that President Bola Tinubu had an advantage in the presidential race by offering solid proof.
The Labour Party’s and Mr. Peter Obi’s evidence against President Tinubu, according to the APC, was weak and insufficient.
To contest Tinubu’s election as president on February 25, Atiku, Obi, and their respective political parties brought the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
The APC contended that Atiku and the PDP were not entitled to any of the reliefs they were requesting in their petition in its last brief of argument, which was submitted to the court by its team of solicitors under the direction of Mr. Lateef Fagbemi, SAN.
The APC said that the petitioners merely threw documents at the court and that this was sufficient proof of their claims.
The petitioners, the party continued, had failed to provide evidence or establish a connection between the papers and the precise charges brought against Tinubu’s victory.
The APC maintains that it is insufficient to merely name exhibits without going above and beyond to show their significance by connecting them to adopted depositions of witnesses.
We implore your lordships to rule that all of the materials have no probative value on the impact of the dumping.
The petitioners’ situation is made worse by the fact that the materials were submitted by knowledgeable senior counsel from the bar.
The party went on to claim that the petitioners’ claim that the election was rigged was unrelated to any particular voting place in the local government districts of each of the 24 states whose elections they were contesting in the case.
It said that the petitioners made generalized accusations, some of which were illegal.
The party maintained that because no significant facts were pled or stated in the majority of the evidence submitted by Atiku, they were irrelevant to the case.
The group argued that the petitioners’ case had to collapse like a house of cards and asked the court to reject the petition and affirm Tinubu’s election.
Regarding the president’s educational background, the party claimed that the evidence presented in court merely proved that he did attend Chicago State University in the United States and received a degree with honors.
The petitioners, according to the parties, failed to present the authentic certificate from which the purportedly falsified certificate was created.
The APC claimed there was no proof he had ever been accused of a crime, found guilty of one, or sentenced to pay a fine. This was about the supposed confiscation of $460,000 following his alleged involvement in a drug-related case.
According to The Punch, the party claimed that Tinubu should not be removed from office because there were no criminal charges or guilty verdicts against him.
Regarding the claim of dual citizenship, the APC countered that the fact that he held a passport from Guinea was not a sufficient reason to bar him from running for office or invalidate his election.
According to the APC, the president is a legitimate Nigerian by birth, not registration or neutralization.
In addition, the party claimed that Tinubu’s lone witness had confirmed his Nigerian nationality.
The petitioners’ claim that Tinubu did not receive 25% of the votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT, Abuja, during the presidential election, according to the party, was baseless and absurd.
According to Section 134(2)(a) and (b) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, the FCT does not have a special status as a constituent unit or a state.
Atiku’s petition was heard in court on July 4 as the respondents gave their closing arguments.
After finishing second in the election, Atiku and his party went to the PEPC and asked the judge to throw out Tinubu’s victory and revoke the certificate of return that had been given to him.
In contrast to the 100 witnesses Atiku and the PDP claimed they would call in the pre-hearing report, they only called 27.
For his part, Obi called 13 of the 50 witnesses he intended to call, and he presented a wealth of papers, including more than 18,000 hazy results sheets that INEC used to declare Tinubu the winner.
Only a small number of voting units, wards, local government areas, and local area councils from the disputed states and the FCT were called upon by Obi and his party to provide testimony.
President Tinubu also only called one witness, as did the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the petition’s first respondent.
The APC, however, said that there was no need to call any witnesses and that doing so would be like beating a dead horse.
CREDIT: The Punch
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