PEPT Strikes Out Peter Obi Petition Against Tinubu’s Victory

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja has struck out the petition filed by Peter Obi of the Labour Party challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.

Haruna Tsammani, who leads the five-member bench, dismissed the petition for lacking in merit in the hours-long judgement delivered on Wednesday.

The court dismissed the petition after resolving all three grounds on which the case was built against Mr Obi and his party, the Labour Party, and in favour of Mr Tinubu and other respondents to the case.

Mr Tsammani held that the petitioners failed to prove the allegations that Mr Tinubu was not qualified to contest the 25 presidential election.

He ruled that the $460,000 forfeiture order of a US court issued against Mr Tinubu in relation to a drug trafficking case in 1993 did not amount to a criminal conviction that could have possibly led to his disqualification from running for the presidency.

He also held that they failed to prove that the election was marred by corrupt practices such as overvoting, suppression of votes, inflation of votes, wrong computation of votes and allegations of votes.

He also ruled that the argument of Labour Party’s lawyers that Mr Tinubu should not be declared winner of the election because he scored less than 25 per cent votes in the FCT is “fallacious and incredibly ridiculous.”

Mr Tsammani said the first port of call would be to consider the directive of state policy and the preamble of the constitution that provides for the equality of citizens.

The court held that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that FCT should be treated as if it were one of the states of the federation.

It added that if the FCT was to be treated as one of the other states, then “it is not superior or inferior to other states of the federation.”

Mr Obi’s case was the second of the three petitions aimed at the outcome of the 25 February presidential election to be dismissed Wednesday.

Related: BREAKING PEPT Strikes Out APM Petition Against Shettima For Double Nomination

The court earlier dismissed the petition by the APM.

It is now reading its judgement on the last petition filed by Atiku Abubakar of the PDP