The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has on Wednesday in Abuja, found the petition filed by the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to seriously flawed and beyond repair.
In its decision on a number of objections raised against the petition, the Tribunal threw out a number of its paragraphs as being ambiguous, inept, inconsistent, unclear, and self-contradictory.
Obi’s petition allegedly cited a number of generic accusations of malpractice, irregularities, and corruption without being precise as required by law, according to Justice Abba Mohammed’s decision.
The Tribunal determined that although Obi claimed to have received the most legitimate votes in the February 25 presidential election, he omitted to explicitly mention or define the amount of legitimate votes he claimed to have received.
According to Justice Mohammed, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate argued a forensic expert report but neglected to submit the report with the petition or serve it on the petition’s respondents, which only served to exacerbate the problem.
Furthermore, Justice Mohammed argued that Obi’s assertion that his votes were suppressed in favor of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was ambiguous since he omitted to provide a specific number of votes to support the assertion.
The Tribunal further determined that because Obi omitted to indicate the quantity of votes given to Tinubu, his claims that the votes attributed to Tinubu were exaggerated were unsupportable.
Regarding the claims of corrupt practices, Justice Mohammed said that not all charges of corruption are considered to be corrupt practices. He also added that averments in a pleading must be precise and not generic, as was the case with Obi.
“The Law is very clear that where someone alleged irregularities in a particular poling unit, as in the instant petition, such a person must prove the particular irregularities in that poling unit for him to succeed in his petition,” it held.
The Tribunal additionally ruled that Obi had not established the specific polling units where no elections were held and that he had not provided information about the polling units where complaints of irregularities were believed to have surfaced.
More details to follow…
