Featured, Politics
The Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku Abubakar, its presidential candidate, today failed to upturn the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal
By Anayo Ezugwu
AT last, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has delivered the long awaited judgement on the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Atiku Abubakar, its presidential candidate, challenging the outcome of the February 23 presidential election. The tribunal sitting in Abuja, Wednesday, September 11, dismissed the petition in its entirety.
Mohammed Garba, presiding justice of the tribunal, ruled that the petition lack merit and should be dismissed. “In the final result, and I have come to the conclusion which is inevitable and unavoidable, that the petitioners have not proved any of the grounds of the petition in paragraph 15 of the petition. This petition is accordingly and hereby dismissed in its entirety,” he said.
Before the final ruling, Justice Garba had ruled that President Muhammadu Buhari was eminently qualified to contest for the February 23 presidential election. The court said evidence presented by the petitioners even showed that Buhari has a West African School Certificate and possesses more academic qualifications that made him even over qualified to contest the election.
The court also held that as against the petitioners’ claim, there is not iota of falsehood in the affidavit of personal information submitted to INEC by Buhari before the election.
The tribunal also declared that there is no evidence that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, transmitted the results of the last presidential election electronically to any server.
The court, in its ruling held that Abubakar and PDP failed to prove the existence of an INEC server. The court held that there is no law in place in Nigeria that allows electronic transmission of results or the transmission of result using card reader.
“I have carefully examined and examined Exhibit 28 (INEC Manual for Election) tendered by the petitioners, I did not see where there is provision for electronic transmission of result of election,” Garba said.
In the course of the ruling, the tribunal struck out the evidence given by David Njorga, Kenyan Information and Communication Technology, ICT, expert, invited as the 59th petitioners’ witnesses to establish the claim that INEC transmitted results to a server during the election. The court, therefore, classified the evidence by Njorga as hearsay because he claimed to have sourced the information about the supposed INEC server from a third party website: www.factsdontlieng.com.
Justice Garba said the court cannot rely on such unbelievable evidence as presented by Njorga to hold that there actually exists a server. The judge also dismissed the evidence by the petitioners’ witness number 60 (Gbenga Joseph) who claimed to be a statistician.
He noted that Joseph admitted during cross-examination that he has no professional certification. Justice Garba said the evidence by both witnesses, who the petitioners described as their expert witnesses, did not qualify as such.
The court also struck out the argument by the APC that Abubakar was not qualified to contest the election because he is alleged not to be a Nigerian by birth. It said that its power does not include determining the qualification of a petitioner in an election dispute.
It said its powers was to determine whether a person elected to the office of the President was validly elected and not to query the qualification of the petitioners to have contested the election, whose outcome was being queried. The court said the APC ought to have filed a cross-petition if it sought to challenge the qualification of the first petitioner to have contested the election.
But the tribunal upheld the argument of Buhari and APC that it lacked the jurisdiction to entertain allegations of corrupt practices and voters’ inducement raised against Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in the petition by Abubakar and PDP. It also upheld the argument by Buhari that it was wrong for the petitioners to raise such grievous allegation against Osinbajo without joining him as a party in the petition to enable him defend himself against the allegation.
In its ruling, the court said the non-joinder of persons against whom grievous criminal allegations were made in the petition, including Osinbajo, is a denial of their rights to fair hearing.
However, Justice Garba struck out the witness statement by Osita Chidoka, former minister of aviation, in support of the petition by Abubakar and the PDP. The court said the statement was incompetent, having been filed in violation of the provision of the Electoral Act. The court also struck out some other documents and portions of some processes filed by the petitioners.
