The reliefs being sought by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi are not grantable, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has argued.
It asked the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) to reject the prayers, which among others seek the declaration of Obi as winner of the February 25 poll.
INEC, the 1st respondent, stated this in the reply filed Monday night by its lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), at the PEPC’s Secretariat, in Abuja.
The commission prayed the court to either “dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic.”
The petitioners are seeking, among others, the nullification of the outcome of the election, which was won by Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Tinubu, who defeated 17 other candidates, scored 8,794,726 votes.
A former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), came second with 6, 984,520 votes; Obi came third with 6, 101,533 votes.
Abubakar and PDP are also challenging the outcome of the poll in a separate petition.
In their petition marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023 filed by lead counsel, Livy Ozoukwu, Obi and the LP are of the view that Tinubu “was not duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.”
Obi and the LP, who claimed that there was rigging in 11 states, alleged that INEC violated its own regulations when it announced the results when the totality of the polling unit results was yet to be fully scanned, uploaded and transmitted electronically as required by the Electoral Act.
Listed as respondents in the petition are: INEC, Tinubu, Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
But in its response, INEC argued that the grounds on which the petition was based were defective, having regard to the vague and imprecise averments supporting the said grounds.
INEC noted that, in relation to their claim of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 and corrupt practices, the petitioners failed to disclose a reasonable cause of action by their failure to plead specific particulars and figures as to how the alleged non-compliance, which they claimed substantially, affected the results of the election.
The commission argued that the petitioners’ ground, hinged on their claim that Tinubu was not elected by majority of lawful votes cast, is defective, owing to their failure to plead the alleged unlawful votes to be deducted and/or lawful votes to be credited to the petitioners.
INEC said that the petitioners’ prayer for the tribunal to declare that Obi scored majority of lawful votes cast at the election and be declared winner was equally defective in view of the petitioners’ “failure to join necessary parties and for lack of requisite particulars and pleading to support same.”
It contended that it was impossible for the tribunal to return Obi as the winner of the election, having not polled the majority of the lawful votes cast at the election and/or secured one quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of, at least, two-thirds of all states in the federation and the FCT.
INEC noted that the law required all political parties, intending to sponsor candidates in the election, to submit lists of their agents and were expected to observe the election process at their units, sign and collect result sheets on behalf of their political parties at the close of polls.
The commission added that some of the party agents whose names were on the list submitted to it were however, absent at their polling units while some others, who were present, did not participate in the election process.
It further stated that the petitioners (Obi and LP) did not have agents in all the polling units across country because they only submitted a list of 134, 874 polling agents, which is 41, 972 short of the 176, 846 polling units nationwide.
It added that the petitioners were not represented in many or some of the polling units across the country.
As against the petitioners’ contention, INEC insisted that Tinubu and Shettima were duly declared and returned elected and issued Certificates of Return, having fulfilled the requirements of the constitution to be declared winners and returned.
It added that Shettma was duly nominated and sponsored to contest the election as the vice presidential candidate.
INEC prayed the court to dismiss the petition by Obi and the LP.
