Admin I Tuesday, Sept. 06, 2023
ABUJA, Nigeria – The Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja has held that Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi has failed to prove allegations of fraud, manipulation of results against President Bola Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima and failure of the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC to comply substantially with the Electoral Act.
In the lead judgement, read by Justice Haruna Tsamani, the PEPC held that Peter Obi and the Labour Party failed to prove criminal allegations against President Bola Tinubu.
It therefore rejected Obi’s petition that Tinubu forfeited $460,000 in a drugs case in Chicago and that the case in question was a civil case and an action in rem, not an action in person and that Tinubu paid the money but was neither arraigned nor convicted and is not banned from entering the United States.
The court relied on the reply to the letter from the former Inspector General of Police to the United State Embassy in Lagos that there was no criminal records against Tinubu in the United States and held that the petitioners failed to prove any criminal record against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Justice Tsamani ruled that the sentence of crime for any offence involving dishonesty or fraud from section 37(d) has to be a criminal offence and thatLP failed to provide evidence that forfeiture is criminal while the respondents proved it was not criminal!
On the 25% mandatory in the FCT, the court ruled that it is hollow to suggest that the vote of people in the FCT has a veto effect, adding that the use of the word ‘and’ has nothing more than that but consistency in referring to the Federal Capital Territory.
He argued that the FCT is to be treated as a state alluding to Ibori Vs the State. He said the FCT is to be treated as one of the states of the federation and therefore resolves the petition in favour of the respondents against the petitioners.
