The Allied Peoples Movement’s (APM) petition challenging President Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima’s eligibility was denied by the Presidential Election Petitions Court, which ruled that it lacked the authority to hear the case according to DAILYTRUST .
The questions presented before the tribunal are pre-election matters, and a high court should have been the appropriate venue, Justice Haruna Tsammani stated in her reading of the lead ruling on Wednesday.
He stated that the allotted 180 days for determining the problem had passed. He also stated that an electoral tribunal has no jurisdiction over a political party’s primary because of the ruling in Alhassan and others versus Ishaku and others.
According to him, sections 131 and 137(1)(a)(j) of the Nigerian Constitution provide guidance on topics pertaining to qualification and disqualification. The complaint, in his opinion, was about a political party’s internal matter.
Tinubu and Shettima were alleged to have been improperly nominated by APM to run in the February 25 election. They contend that they were rendered unconstitutional by a combined reading of Sections 131(c), 142(2), and 133 of the Electoral Act in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution.
They claim that the period of time between Kabiru Masari’s announcement of his withdrawal as an APC stand-in on June 24, 2022, and the date Shettima’s name was submitted to INEC on July 14, 2022, was 21 days, in violation of Section 33 of the Electoral Act of 2022, which allows for a period of 14 days for the replacement of a candidate for an election.
Bennieo (
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