President Bola Tinubu has found himself in hot water over statements made by his legal team at the ongoing Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT).
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Tinubu has been fighting on multiple fronts since he assumed office. Following his declaration as president by the Independent and National Electoral Commission (INEC), his opponents have dragged him and INEC to court over controversies and irregularities surrounding the February 25 presidential election.
His adversaries in the boxing ring are the PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party’s (LP) Peter Obi. Tinubu had 8,794,726 votes, with Abubakar and Obi getting 6,984,520 votes and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
They’re contesting that Tinubu shouldn’t have been declared the winner, having failed to meet electoral requirements. In an earlier article, we did an explainer highlighting the suits brought against Tinubu’s presidency. The one which has stirred reaction the most is the 25% criterion in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Only the LP met this threshold.
Tinubu’s legal team is led by Wole Olanipekun (SAN). The team filed a final written address dated July 14. This was in response to the petitions brought against them by the LP and the PDP.
What was in Tinubu’s lawyers’ final address?
According to ThisDay, Tinubu’s lawyers argued that nullifying the election results because Tinubu failed to meet 25% in the FCT could “lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature.”
The address noted: “May we draw the attention of the court to the fact that there is no punctuation (comma) in the entire section 134(2)(b) of the Constitution, particularly immediately after the ‘States’ and the succeeding ‘and’ connecting the Federal Capital Territory with the States. In essence, the reading of the subsection has to be conjunctive and not disjunctive, as the Constitution clearly makes it so.
Pressed further by this constitutional imperative, the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, is taken ‘as if’ it is the 37th State, under and by virtue of section 299 of the Constitution.
With much respect, any other interpretation different from this will lead to absurdity, chaos, anarchy and alteration of the very intention of the legislature.”
Tinubu’s team also wants the court to bar Obi from contesting should the election be nullified. According to The Cable, Olanipekun argued that Obi’s claim lacked merit. They say he wasn’t on the LP’s membership register when he contested the presidency. He added:
“Obi is constitutionally barred from participating in any election, in the very unlikely event that the election of 25th February 2023 is voided, as the only candidates constitutionally prescribed to contest any subsequent election shall be Tinubu and the candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar who came second, by scoring the next majority of votes in the highest number of States (19 States), to the 1st petitioner’s 16 States, and also coming second by plurality of votes, having scored 6,984,520, far and above 1st petitioner’s 6,101,533 votes.”
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What have the reactions been like?
The Chief Spokesperson of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, described the statement as “threatening the whole country”.
Demola Rewaju, a Special Assistant on Digital Media Strategy to Atiku Abubakar, tweeted: “As long as the Constitution swore in Bola Tinubu, he can be removed by the Constitution. It’s as simple as that. The resort to blackmail and threats of anarchy will amount to nothing once a judgement is delivered.”
However, Dada Olusegun, the Special Assistant to the President on Digital Communications, has described the reports as “fake”. He tweeted, “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s counsel didn’t argue nullifying the election would lead to anarchy. They argued that Abuja is the 37th state for electoral purposes, and any other interpretation would lead to anarchy. But as usual, the fake news machines are desperate to twist it.”
IPC Justice, which investigates corruption in politics and the judiciary, issued a statement to security agencies. It urged them to “resist any directive that undermines the fundamental rights guaranteed under our shared social contract.”
What else should you know?
It’s not clear when a ruling will be made on this matter by the PEPT. Regardless, it’s expected that whatever judgement the tribunal passes will be contested all the way to the Supreme Court. This could be several months away. We will keep you up to date with any updates as the case progresses.
