President Bola Tinubu and his Vice, Kashim Shettima, have mocked the appeal filed at Nigeria’s Supreme Court by Peter Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 presidential election, against their victory, describing it as “mere jamboree” intended mainly for media entertainment.
In his appeal, Obi had posited that Shettima was not qualified to run alongside Tinubu as he (Shettima) had violated the Electoral Act on the grounds that he allegedly had double nomination, as candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Borno Central Senatorial District and as vice presidential candidate.
The LP candidate had urged the apex court to disqualify Shettima and nullify Tinubu’s victory as a result of the double nomination.
However, the President and his Vice, in a statement on Friday, told the Supreme Court to dismiss Obi’s appeal just like the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) dismissed his earlier petition.
“In short, the entire petition was nothing but a jamboree of sort, which was prosecuted more in the media than in the courtroom and the lower court, being a court of law and not of sentiments, dutifully threw away their petition after a painstaking consideration of same,” Tinubu and Shettima said in the joint respondents’ brief filed by their team of lawyers led by Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN).
The legal team also said a similar appeal filed by the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) challenging Shettima’s nomination to contest the February 25 election was a mere waste of the time of the court.
They said that the Obi appeal, if considered from every angle, was “lacking in merit, substance and good faith.”
”Be it noted that unlike previous election petitions over which this honourable court has presided (in time past) and made far reaching pronouncements on diverse issues, including but not limited to ballot box snatching, vote buying, voters’ intimidation, interference by the military, thuggery, ballot stuffing, violence, disenfranchisement, non-recording of votes in form EC8A, which is the building block or the base of the pyramid, and such other electoral vices, this appeal arising from a dismissed petition, the main grouse of which is that, while the presidential election was peacefully conducted all over the country, and results of elections carefully and accurately recorded in the various form EC8As, some unidentified and unspecified results, even in the appellants’ brief were not uploaded electronically to the IREV portal.
“The other very remote contention is that the 2nd respondent did not score 25 per cent of the votes recorded at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“With much respect to the appellants, the petition is more of a fishing expedition; much more of evocation of thunder without dews.
“We submit that the lower court (PEPC) rightly held that the appellants (Obi and LP), as petitioners before it, failed to prove their allegations of non-compliance and corrupt practices as required by law”, they stated.