Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has defended the results it announced for the country’s presidential election and urged all candidates to accept defeat.
INEC filed its defence at the presidential election tribunal against Peter Obi of Labour Party (LP) and Atiku Abubakar of People’s Democratic Party (PDP), both of whom are claiming to have won the poll.
The petitioners are either seeking their declaration as winners or the nullification of the results of the presidential election conducted on February 25, 2023.
INEC on March 1, 2023 declared Ahmed Bola Tinubu of All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner after he got 8,794,726 votes and attaining 25 percent in 29 out of the 36 Nigerian states.
Read: Tinubu declared Nigeria’s president-elect
Abubakar of PDP came second with 6,984,520 votes and with 25 percent votes in 21 states, while Obi of LP came third with 6,101,533 votes and 25 percent votes in 16 states.
INEC described the petition by LP and its candidate Obi against Tinubu’s victory as grossly incompetent and vague.
Nigeria’s opposition Labour Party candidate Peter Obi. PHOTO | PIUS UTOMI EKPEI | AFP
According to INEC, Obi and LP could not have won the election and could not challenge the result as they had deficiency or lacked the strength to participate in it.
“LP and Obi did not have polling agents in all the polling units across Nigeria as they only submitted a list of 134,874 polling agents which is 41,972 short of the 176,846 polling units,” INEC said.
“INEC asks the court to dismiss the petition as the requests of Obi and his party LP are non-grantable,” INEC’s lawyer Abubakar Mahmoud said.
The commission argued that while Nigeria’s vice president-elect Shettima was duly nominated and sponsored to contest the election, he was, together with Tinubu, duly declared elected and were issued with certificates after having fulfilled the requirements of the constitution.
In response to Abubakar and PDP, INEC’s lawyer said Tinubu and APC met all the legal requirements for them to be announced the winners of Nigeria’s presidential election.
“The 2nd respondent, Abubakar, scored 25 percent of the valid votes cast in Nigeria’s 29 states, satisfying the requirement of the constitution to be declared winner of the presidential election, thus rendering its request unnecessary,’’ INEC said.
INEC added that it did not act hastily, based on the margin of lead, as claimed by Abubakar and the PDP in declaring Tinubu the winner of the election.
Nigeria’s opposition People’s Democratic Party candidate Atiku Abubakar. PHOTO | PIUS UTOMI EKPEI | AFP
Read: Nigeria’s Atiku Abubakar: Sixth time unlucky
It also stressed that Tinubu scored 25 per cent of the valid votes cast in 29 states of Nigeria.
While faulting the petitioners’ claims, INEC argued that the provisions of the country’s constitution apply to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as if it were one of the states of the federation.
It added that the FCT has no special constitutional status over and above the other 36 states of Nigeria to require a presidential candidate to obtain at least 25 per cent of the votes cast before being declared winner.
INEC further argued that PDP’s Abubakar could not be declared winner by the tribunal because he failed to fulfil the constitutional requirement.
“Abubakar failed to score at least one quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the 36 states of the federation and the FCT. So, he could not have been declared the winner of the presidential election,” INEC argued.
Source: The East African
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