By Chesa Chesa
The Labour Party (LP) and its candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, have filed 51 grounds of appeal before the Supreme Court, seeking to invalidate the election of President Bola Tinubu, as had been upheld by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, (PEPC).
The appeal argued that hr PEPC erred in law and hence reached an erroneous decision when it denied his petition to contest the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
Among other things, the appeal claimed that the five-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Justice Haruna Tsammani committed a grievous miscarriage of justice against him by ruling that he did not specify voting units where anomalies occurred during the election.
In the appeal, Obi chastised the lower court for dismissing his complaint because he did not disclose the numbers of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He claimed that the testimony of his witnesses was wrongfully dismissed as incompetent, accusing the lower court of violating his right to a fair hearing.
He also informed the Supreme Court that the panel had wrongfully disregarded his claim that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had posted 18, 088 obscured results to its IReV platform.
Furthermore, he claimed that the lower court ignored his claim that certified true copies of documents issued by INEC to his legal team consisted of 8,123 blurred results containing blank A4 papers, pictures, and images of unknown persons, purporting to be the CTC of polling unit results of the presidential election.
“The learned justices of the court below erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when they held and concluded that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practices and over-voting,” Obi stated.
“On the issue of the 25% requirement for Abuja, Obi and the Labour Party listed the particulars of error by the PEPC as follows. That the PEPC failed to appreciate that for the President to assume the office or position of the Governor of Abuja, is also under a mandate to secure 25% of the votes cast in the FCT.
“They also accused the PEPC of overlooking the fuller purport of section 299 which will be more glaring on a calm examination of section 301 of the constitution”, added a statement issued by LP spokesman, Obiora Ifoh, on Tuesday.
No date yet has been fixed for the hearing of the case.
