Labour Party, Peter Obi finally drags, Tinubu, APC before presidential election petition tribunal

The Labour Party LP and its presidential candidate in the February 25 election, Mr Peter Gregory Obi have filed a petition before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja challenging the Independent National Electoral Commission’s declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress, APC, as the winner of the election.

Obi and LP are praying the court to hold that at the time of the Presidential election held on 25th February 2023 Tinubu and Kashim Shettima were not qualified to contest the election.

In the petition predicated mainly on the alleged double nomination, the Petitioners are asking the tribunal to declare all the votes recorded for Tinubu in the election as wasted votes owing to the non-qualification of Tinubu and Shetima.

They want the petition to be determined on the basis of the remaining votes after discountenancing the votes credited to Tinubu, the 1st petitioner, Peter Obi scored a majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and had nothing less than 25 percent in each of at least 2/3 of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja and satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of 25th February 2023 Presidential Election.

They also contended that Tinubuit having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the Presidential election in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on Saturday, February 25, 2023.

It will be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu had on March 1 declared Tinubu president-elect on the grounds that he polled 8,805,835 votes.

Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, had 6,984,640 votes while Obi was said to have scored 6,984,640 votes.

But Obi and Atiku had called for the cancellation of the results, alleging malpractice following the electoral umpire’s failure to electronically upload results immediately from its polling units to the INEC Results Viewing Portal.

Based on the Electoral Act, aggrieved contestants have 21 days from the day of the election results announcement to fill their petitions.

DAILY POST observes that the Labour Party submitted its petition at the Presidential Election Petition Registry at 8pm on Monday through Obi’s legal team, a day to the expiration of the timeline.

Details later.