Given the 180-day timeline provided by the Electoral Act for election petitions to be decided, the tribunal has continued to give judgement, even as applause and criticism has trailed its conflicting verdicts, KEHINDE OSASONA writes.
In a bid to beat the 180 days deadline
Governorship Election Petition Tribunals for most states have delivered judgments on the outcome of the March 18, 2023, governorship elections. They include Kano, Bauchi, Zamfara, Plateau, Benue, Enugu, Lagos, Benue, Cross River, Gombe, Akwa-Ibom, among others.
The judgments have continued to elicit mixed reaction from different quarters.
It goes without saying that the tribunals were empowered under the law to uphold, annul vote, or order a new election while its decision can be appealed before Nigeria’s Supreme Court.
Against the backdrop, most recently, the tribunals have sacked many lawmakers just as others would face a rerun and supplementary elections.
Blueprint Weekend finding confirmed that some upset verdicts had already been given where some had been sacked and other politicians are on the verge of facing supplementary and rerun elections.
From the verdicts given so far, no fewer than seven Senators and 23 House of Representatives members had their elections nullified.
Three of the senators were sacked outright while four of them will face supplementary polls.
Presently, 30 NASS members, seven Senators, 23 Reps’ victories had been nullified by the tribunal.
Among the nullified polls, APC had five, PDP 14, Labour Party, LP 6, and NNPP 2. By implication, APC has gained seven seats, PDP 5, LP 2, and All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA 1
During the pronouncement, some of the reasons the tribunals gave for annulling the elections include invalid nomination, forged names, forged certificates, falsification of results, exclusion of results, non-recording of results, and non-conduct of elections in some polling units.
Tinubu floors Atiku, Obi, APM
While dismissing two separate petitions filed by PDP Presidential Candidates, Atiku Abubakar, and that of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, all five members of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) unanimously affirmed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the validly elected President of Nigeria.
In its over-12-hour-long judgment, the panel of judges led by Haruna Tsammani dismissed all three petitions challenging Tinubu’s election in his lead judgment.
The rest of the members of the panel who also took turns to adopt the reasoning and conclusion of the lead judgment were Stephen Adah, Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf, Moses Ugo, and Abbah Mohammed.
The petitioners in the week-long legal tussle were Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, a first runner-up in the election; Peter Obi of the LP, the second runner-up, and the All Peoples Movement (APM).
The APM presidential candidate Blueprint Weekend recalled merely polled over 2,000 votes out of the 24 million votes cast in the election.
Consequently, the panel unanimously slammed the petitioners for lack of credible evidence, describing their legal arguments as “fallacious and ridiculous”.
Tsammani declared: “From the foregoing, therefore, it is very clear and certain that the petitioners have failed to prove that the 2023 presidential election and the return of the 2nd respondent (Tinubu) was invalidated by reason of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022,”
Tsammani said, “It is very clear that there was no credible evidence by the petitioners to prove the allegations of corrupt practices” and that the petitions failed to present alternative results upon which they claimed they had won the election.
The court held that INEC was, therefore, right to declare Mr Tinubu as the winner of the election “in the absence of any other rival or alternate results placed before this court by the petitioners that the second respondent (Tinubu) who scored 8,794,722 votes as against 6,984,520 votes scored by the petitioners (Atiku and PDP).”
“Having considered and decided that the three petitions are all devoid of merit, the petitions are hereby dismissed.
“Accordingly, I find the declaration and return of Bola Ahmed Tinubu by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” Tsammani declared.
Governorships tribunal upsets, protests
Meanwhile, controversy has continued to trail verdicts delivered by the State Governorship Election Petition Tribunals in respect of the outcome of the March 18, 2023, governorship elections in Nigeria.
The judgments delivered so far have been greeted with different reactions from different people depending on which side of the divide one belongs to. In some cases, the aggrieved persons or party has been subjected to issuing threats as a way of driving home their points.
Some analysts have continued to give kudos to the panel for good judgment delivery, saying it reflected the true position of the law.
In the same vein, some others have come down heavily against them, describing some of the judgments as miscarriage of justice.
Some of the states include Kano being the most controversial where there was a judgment against the Governor Yusuf Abba where the judges deducted 165,663 votes from the NNPP for not stamping or signing and therefore declared invalid. Then came Bauchi, Zamfara, Plateau, Benue, Enugu, Lagos, Cross River, Gombe, Ebonyi among others.
Lawyers, CSO, political parties, speak
Reacting over the development in an exclusive interview, an Abuja based lawyer, Emmanuel Ekwe described the Nigerian Judiciary stance as vexatious, saying they have overtime failed to dispense justice in the manner expected of it.
He said: “More worrisome is the fact that it applies different strokes on different persons thereby creating room for the obvious inconsistencies we see in the judgments churned out on a daily basis.
“If you take a cursory look at the verdicts delivered by the Governorship Election Petition Tribunals in Osun and Kano State, you do not need a native doctor to tell you that the petitions had similar elements but different judgments emerged.
“Not minding the situation we find ourselves in, it is my considered view that parties who are aggrieved over the outcomes of election disputes should eschew violence and adopt a more efficient and civil approach by exhausting the option of appeal.”
Also speaking, another lawyer, Godson Oguche, noted that in an election, there would definitely be an aggrieved party but advised that the polity must not be overheated, insisting that parties should tow machinery of appeal.
“After a judgment like that, people should not ventilate anger unnecessarily by overheating the polity.
“The parallel tribunal who are domiciled on social media who do not even know the happenings in the court should be discouraged because some of them did not know the grounds of appeals in the first place,” Oguche added.
While also venting his anger on the conduct of the tribunal, another Civil Society Group, Civil Society Coalition for Credible Elections (CIVSOCE) recently expressed mixed feeling over the Plateau State Election Petition Tribunal judgment which nullified the election of member of the House of Representatives, Beni Lar, a PDP candidate from Plateau state.
The CSO in a statement contended that the nomination of a candidate which the panel of justices premised their judgment had been classified as a pre-election matter by the Electoral Act 2022 as amended.
Citing Section 84 (14) of the amended Act, the group insisted that pre-election matters can only be filed and entertained in the federal high court.
In his own contribution, the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Alliance (AA), Olu Omotoso advised aggrieved person or group of people who feels dissatisfied with lower levels of legal arbitration to embrace windows of higher levels of approach to further test the veracity of claims and arguments, up to the highest Court in the land.
Omotoso said: “In a democracy, one of the beautiful scenarios that make the participants get excited is the right to freely take part in the process of electing leaders of preference without compulsion. In the event that one or more persons disagree with the outcome of any aspect of the process, the tribunal/courts are there to mediate because they are the legal arbiter in settlement of conflicts.
“However, whatever the pronouncement of the final court in whatever situation, every party must comply because it is the only civil route that every democratic mind must follow.
“In the unfortunate scenario where justice is seen to have been denied by any party however, dialogue and corrective actions like making plans to address whatever loopholes or lacunae that made injustice possible should be concertedly addressed. In this case, amendments to existing laws to prevent future occurrence of the perceived legal exit route of “technicalities” should be sponsored at the National Assembly to forestall any further easy access to such routes.
“Even though the aggrieved party may not be cool with whatever outcome by their own perception, the only option available to them in a decent democracy is to succumb to whatever legal resolution is reached. Extra judicial approaches are grossly undemocratic and always counterproductive at the terminal end of it. Ultimately, losses at elections present ample opportunities for early progressive preparation towards another round in the next election circle.”
While also making his submission in another exclusive chat, the State Publicity Secretary, Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Kwara State, Sholyments Olusegun Olusola told this medium that no matter the decision of the court, his party still holds the nation’s judiciary in high esteem.
Sholyments said: “Most of our petitions here in kwara are being erroneously dismissed but we believed their lordships are humans and are prone to mistakes, our legal teams have been mandated to peruse some of those verdicts with a view to appeal some of them and in due time, the public will be updated.
“I can only appeal to our people and Nigerians to remain calm in the face of this misgovernance and hardship, justice delay is not justice denied.”
Similarly, the factional National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party (LP), Abayomi Arabambi said: “My position is that the judiciary must not be blamed for whatever happened.”
Arabambi, who belongs to the Lamidi Apapa faction of LP added: “Parties should always know that for assembly the first instance is the tribunal while the Appeal Court is the court of second instance while the Supreme Court is the last court for the governorships and president.
“Be that as it may, my general overview is that although a lot of issues have been raised, political parties should learn their lessons and stop a situation where candidates are not validly nominated forgetting that there is law or constitution that guides the whole process.”
