By our Reporter
The Presidential Election Petition Court,(PEPC) sitting in Abuja has affirmed the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu describing Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar’s petition as fallacious.
Having monitored the sitting,the five members of the PEPC in Abuja, on Wednesday, unanimously affirmed Bola Tinubu as the validly elected President of Nigeria, a decisive judicial resolution of the credibility questions that have hovered around his election for over six months.
In its over-12-hour-long judgement, the panel of judges led by Haruna Tsammani dismissed all three petitions challenging Tinubu’s election in his lead judgement.
The rest of the members of the panel – Stephen Adah, Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf (the only female on the bench), Moses Ugo, and Abbah Mohammed – took their turns to also adopt the reasoning and conclusion of the lead judgement.
The petitions decided by the court were filed within three weeks of the declaration of Mr Tinubu as the winner of the 25 February presidential election on 1 March.
The petitioners were Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who was declared as the first runner-up in the election; Peter Obi of the Labour Party, the second runner-up, and the All Peoples Movement (APM).
The panel unanimously stressed the total lack of credible evidence adduced by the petitioners to support their cases and described some of the legal arguments of Atiku and Mr Obi as “fallacious and ridiculous”.
“From the foregoing, therefore, it is very clear and certain that the petitioners have failed to prove that the 2023 presidential election and the return of the 2nd respondent (Mr Tinubu) was invalidated by reason of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022,” Mr Tsammani declared.
The declaration came at a point in the unusually drawn-out proceeding when members of the members of the audience in the packed courtroom had reduced by almost half.