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From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Supreme Court in a unanimous judgment on Thursday dismissed the separate appeals filed by former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and his Labour Party(LP) counterpart, Mr. Peter Obi against the victory of President Bola Tinubu for lacking in merit.
Justice John Okoro who read the lead judgment that was unanimously supported by six other justices of the court affirmed the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC),which upheld the return and declaration of Bola Tinubu as winner of the Febraury 25 election.
While Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi had wanted Tinubu’s win in February 2023 to be nullified on the ground that he did not get 25% FCT votes, the Appeal Court ruled that their petition was immaterial.
Delivering his judgment on this issue, the Supreme Court agreed with the PEPC that a candidate does not need to get at least 25% Federal Capital Territory (FCT) votes to be declared as the country’s president.
Delivering judgment in Atiku’s alpeal, Justice John Inyang Okoro, struck out the allegation by Atiku 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.
It held that Atiku did not prove that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, did not substantially comply with provisions of the Electoral Act, in the conduct of the election.
The apex court held that section 185(1) of the Evidence Act provided that an election should not be liable to be invalidated, when alleged non compliance did not substantially affect the outcome of an election.
It held that evidence contained in the record of the appeal showed that the Appellants abandoned the duty imposed on them by the law to not only prove the alleged non compliance, but to establish that failure of INEC to transmit results of the election through its IReV portal, influenced the outcome of the presidential poll.
The Supreme Court said it had in past judgements, made it clear that there was a difference between election result collation system and the IReV portal.
“Where the IReV portal fails, it does not stop the collation which up till the last election was manually done,” the court held.
Nevertheless, it stressed that INEC’s failure to electronically transmit results of the election, denied the electorates the opportunity to follow and cross-check results that were eventually uploaded.
“Truth must be told, the non transmission of results to the IReV portal may also reduce the confidence of the voting population in the electoral process,” the Supreme Court warned.
Justice Okoro held that the unavailability of results on INEC’s IReV portal “for whatever reason, could not be the reason for an election to be nullified.
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 over 24 states as required by law did not affect his victory in the election.
The court also held that Atiku failed to prove his allegation of widespread rigging during the election or that he won the election
“I am unable to find any figures put forward by the appellant that he scored the majority votes, other than the figures declared by INEC declaring the second respondent (Tinubu) winner of the election.
The votes before us show that the second respondent Tinubu won the election,” Justice Okoro said.
On the issue of 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 appellant as argued by their lawyers.
On the whole, having resolved all the issues against the appellant, I hold that there is no merit in this appeal and it hereby dismissed,” Mr Okoro said.
On that basis, he said the judgment of the PEPC delivered on 6 Septemeber, affirming Mr Tinubu as the duly elected President of Nigeria “is hereby affirmed.”
The court earlier dismissed the bid by Atiku to tender fresh evidence of certificate forgery against President Tinubu.
The fresh evidence was a deposition of the registrar of Chicago State University (CSU) on the academic records of Mr Tinubu. Atiku had obtained the document after winning a legal case in a US court which compelled the unviversity to release Mr Tinubu’s academic records to Atiku to prove allegation of certificate forgery against Mr Tinubu.
The court held that it lacked the jurisdiction to entertain such evidence that was not tendered before the lower court.
Meanwhile, the appeal lodged by Obi and the Labour Party, equally suffered the same fate as it was dismissed for lacking in merit.
In a unanimous decision by a seven-member panel of Justices, the apex court held that Obi’s appeal deserved to be dismissed.
Delivering the lead judgment which was aupported by other members of the panel, Justice Inyang Okoro, held that issues Obi raised in his case were already decided in a separate appeal that was filed by the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
Justice Okoro noted that the only distinct issue that Obi raised in his appeal, was the issue that the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, had double nominations from the All Progressives Congress, APC.
The court held that it had earlier decided the issue on May 26, in an appeal marked: SC/CV/501/2023.
“This court cannot allow the matter to be relitigated in this court. There must be an end to litigation. This matter ought not to have come here.
“The appeal lacks merit and it is accordingly dismissed,” the apex court held.
“The judgment of the court below delivered on September 6th, 2023 affirming the election of the second respondent as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is hereby affirmed.”
It listened to Obi’s appeal for about five minutes. In dealing with the LP’s presidential candidate on the issue of double nomination of Vice-President Kashim Shettima, the court held that the issue had been dealt with in its ruling on May 26.
“As for issue Number 4 which has to do with double nomination which was not in Atiku’s appeal, it is the view of this court that this issue having been dealt with by this court, this court cannot allow the matter to be re-litigated in this very court. Tere must be an end to litigation,” Okoro held.
