PEPT verdict: Obi, LP file 51 grounds of appeal at Supreme Court
By Ishaya Ibrahim
The opposition Labour Party and its presidential candidate in the February 25 presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi, have filed 51 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court to invalidate the election of President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.
The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT), which is the court of first instance in presidential election petitions, in a unanimous judgment on September 6, 2023, dismissed the petition brought forward by Obi and the LP for supposedly lacking in merit.
However, Obi, in his appeal, maintained that the PEPC erred in law and thereby reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed the petition he lodged to challenge the outcome of the presidential poll.
Among other things, he contended that the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the Court of Appeal, indulged in a grave miscarriage of justice against him, when it held that he did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election.
He further faulted the PEPC for dismissing his case on the premise that he did not specify the figures of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the ruling APC.
Obi equally accused the Justice Tsammani-led panel of erring in law when it relied on paragraph 4(1) (d) (2) and 54 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022 to strike out paragraphs of his petition.
While accusing the lower court of breaching his right to fair hearing, Obi, insisted that evidence of his witnesses were wrongly dismissed as incompetent.
He told the apex court that the panel unjustly dismissed his allegation that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) uploaded 18,088 blurred results on its IReV portal.
More so, he alleged that the lower court ignored his allegation that certified true copies of documents that INEC issued to his legal team, comprised of 8,123 blurred results that contained blank A4 papers, pictures and images of unknown persons, purporting same to be the CTC of polling units’ results of the presidential election.
“The learned justices of the court below erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when they held and concluded that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practices and over-voting,” Obi added.
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