Presidential Election Tribunal Commences Sitting Monday
Legal Battle On The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) will, on Monday, 8th April 2023, start pre-hearing sessions in the five petitions challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of the February 25, 2023 election.
More specifically, Monday’s proceedings would basically be house clearing exercise to settle pending applications after which a timetable would be drawn for the hearing of the substantive petitions.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on March 1, 2023, declared Tinubu winner of the election with 8,794,726 votes. While Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), came second and third with 6, 984, 520 and 6, 101, 533 votes respectively.
As expected, there have been agitations and questioning the authencity of the results, accusing INEC of declaring fake results.
Consequently, after the March 1 declaration of Tinubu as winner of the February 25 presidential poll, five aggrieved political parties and their candidates challenged the results declared by INEC.
The five political parties and their candidates filed their petitions against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the President-elect, Bola Tinubu and his political platform, the All Progressives Congress (APC) within the time frame allowed by the law.
The first petition was filed by Action Alliance (AA) and its presidential candidate, Solomon Okangbuan, with suit number CA/PEPC/01/2023. AA filed its petition against the declaration of Tinubu on March 16. The second petitioner was Action Peoples Party (APP), which filed its petition on March 19.
This was followed by Allied Peoples Movement (APM) and its candidate, Chichi Ojei, with suit number: CA/PEPC/03/2023; and the Labour Party (LP) with its presidential candidate, Peter Obi in a suit marked: CA/PEPC/04/2023, which was filed same day. Atiku’s petition was filed exactly 21 days after Tinubu was declared President-elect.
Meanwhile, well meaning citizens have continued to advise the judiciary to be fair and just in handling the political quagmire which has polarized the country since the conduct of the 2023 general election.
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