Victor EzejaA seven-man panel of Justices of the Nigeria Supreme Court led by Justice John Inyang Okoro has dismissed the appeals filed by the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, the Labour Party, Peter Obi, challenging the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) on the election of Bola Tinubu.
In the lead judgment delivered on Thursday, the Court upheld the September 6 ruling of the PEPC in favour of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
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The court while pointing out that the law empowers the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to determine the mode of transmission of election results, held that the collation of results is unaffected by the Commission’s inability to electronically transmit election results via the IReV portal.
Justice Okoro held that the appellants failed to prove noncompliance with the electoral law but relied solely on INEC’s inability to electronically transmit the election results to the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal.
On the issue of scoring minimum 25 per cent votes in the Federal Capital Territory, by Presidential candidates, the apex court upheld the ruling of the Appeal Court and resolved the matter in favour of Tinubu.
The lower court had ruled that FCT does not have a special status in the constitution and should be treated as the 37th state in Nigeria for the purposes of calculating the two-thirds majority required for a presidential candidate to be declared the winner of an election.
According to Okoro, this means that even if a presidential candidate does not receive 35% of the votes cast in the federal capital territory of Abuja, he or she will be deemed to have been duly elected if they receive 25%, or one-quarter of the vote, in two-thirds of the 27 states of the Federation, including the FCT.
The opposition candidates had contended that since President Tinubu did not score up to 25 per cent votes in the FCT he was not qualified to be declared winner of the election.
According to the results announced by INEC, President Tinubu did not score up to 25 per cent votes in the FCT making the opposition candidates to argue that
All other justices concurred with the lead judgment delivered by Justice Okoro, affirming that the appeals lacked merit.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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