The Labour Party and their presidential candidate, Peter Obi, have formally filed a petition to nullify the declaration of the All Progressive Congress’ Presidential Candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the winner of the Presidential election that was held on the 25th of February, 2023.
The petition by Obi was filed on Tuesday morning at the Abuja court of appeal, that also serves as the presidential election petition tribunal.
The respondents of this petition labelled CA/PEPC/03/2023 are; the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Bola Tinubu, Kashim Shettima, and the APC.
Through Livy Ozoukwu, his lawyer, Obi stated in the petition that Tinubu was not qualified to contest for presidency at the time of the election.
He went on to say that the president-elect was not duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election.
Therefore, he asked the tribunal to determine that all the votes recorded for Tinubu and Shettima are wasted voted, due to the fact that neither Tinubu nor Shettima were qualified.
The petitioner also prayed, “That it be determined that the 2nd respondent (Tinubu) having failed to score one-quarter of the votes cast at the presidential election in the federal capital territory, Abuja was not entitled to be declared and returned as the winner of the presidential election held on 25 February 2023,” and asked the tribunal to make “an order cancelling the election and compelling the 1st respondent (INEC) to conduct a fresh election at which the 2nd respondent (Tinubu), 3rd respondent (Shettima) and 4th respondent (APC) shall not participate.”
In the election referred to in this petition, Bola Tinubu was announced as the President-Elect after polling 8,794,726 votes, winning against the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who polled 6,984,520 votes and 6,101,533 votes respectively.
Samuel-Ugwuezi Ozioma
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