Supreme Court has upheld President Tinubu’s election victory.
Newsonline Nigeria reports that Justice John Okoro, the chairman of a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court, has affirmed the election of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Okoro affirmed Tinubu’s emergence on Thursday while dismissing the appeals against the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPT) judgment in favour of Tinubu.
ALSO: Supreme Court throws out Atiku’s appeal against Tinubu victory
Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had appealed to contest the tribunal judgement that upheld Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
The tribunal had held that the PDP candidate failed to plead the facts of his case beyond a reasonable doubt while also dismissing the drug trafficking claims by the LP.
In its ruling on Thursday, Justice Okoro rejected the PDP’s motion for the court to admit fresh evidence to prove Tinubu’s alleged fake certificate, citing failure to meet the 180-day timeframe provided by the constitution to amend applications.
The court stated that the appellants failed to convince the apex court on why it waited until after the lower court had delivered the judgement before bringing the said depositions to the court.
Also, according to the justice, the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload results on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) portal cannot be a ground upon which an election is nullified.
The justice dismissed the arguments regarding the constitutional requirement that a presidential candidate must secure a minimum of 25 percent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), among other requirements, to be declared the winner.
Also, the claims on suppression of votes and multiple voting were discarded by the lead justice. The justice resolved all the seven issues brought against Tinubu’s tribunal victory against the appellants.
All the other justices who had delivered judgements at press time agreed with the lead judgement.
Details later…
