By Nicholas Ojo
The Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the Presidential Petition Election Tribunal on Wednesday began with the fourth petition (CA/PEPC/04/2023) between the Allied Peoples Movement vs the Independent National Electoral Commission and the 4 others.
According to the Court document, listed as 1st to 5th respondents are Independent National Electoral Commission, All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and Kabiru Masari.
The petitions, marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023, CA/PEPC/05/2023 and CA/PEPC/04/2023, were lodged before the court by the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi; a former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, as well as the Allied Peoples Movement, respectively.
The Court earlier said the Allied Peoples Movement’s petition challenging the qualification of Vice President, Kashim Shettima, was a pre-election matter.
Reading his verdict, Tsammani said the matter ought to have been challenged before the conduct of the presidential election.
He said, “The issue of qualification or disqualification is a constitutional one.
The issue of disqualification or qualification is a pre-election matter.
“It must be determined before the conduct of the election. This court has no jurisdiction to hear the matter and even if it does it is status-barred because it is a pre-election matter.”
INEC had on March 1, announced that Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress won the presidential election that was held on February 25, ahead of 17 other candidates that participated in the contest.
It declared that Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat the two major contenders, Atiku, of the PDP, who came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the LP, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, both Atiku and Obi approached the court to invalidate it.
