NIGERIA’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu, on Monday, urged the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja not to harmonise the three pending petitions challenging his victory.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, Peter Obi of the Labour Party’s and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) filed separate petitions in March to challenge the outcome of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023.
The petitioners alleged widespread irregularities during the conduct of the presidential election.
While Atiku and Obi, in their separate petitions urged the court to either declare them president or nullify Tinubu’s victory and order a fresh poll; the APM on the other hand is praying for the court to declare Atiku president.
Last week, the court asked lawyers of parties in the petitions to address it on the provisions of paragraph 50 of the Fourth Schedule of the Electoral Act, 2022, which allow the court to consolidate the petitions.
At the resumed pre-hearing session on Monday, Tinubu’s lawyer, Akin Olujimi, SAN appealed to the panel of the court led by Haruna Tsammani not to consolidate the petitions.
Olujimi, a former Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), argued that consolidating the suit would undermine the “interest of justice.”
“The interest of justice in these petitions should be a restraint on the power of this court in granting a consolidation of these petitions,” he said during the pre-hearing session of the APM’s petition on Monday.
While Olujinmi conceded that some of the petitioners’ prayers were similar, he said “some issues are not the same”.
“The counsel representing the petitioners and respondents are different and the grounds of the petitions are different. It will be overreaching for the respondents if consolidation is granted. We most humbly urge my lords not to grant consolidation,” Olujinmi said.
Arguing in the same fashion, APC’s lawyer, Charles Uwensuyi-Edosomwan, said consolidating the petitions would be “unwieldy.”
“We are opposing the consolidation of the petitions. The interest of justice will not be served by a consolidation of all of these petitions,” Uwensuyi-Edosomwan, SAN, said, contending that “the trial of the petitions will be unwieldy, and the substance of the case will be lost.”
But INEC’s lawyer, Kemi Pinheiro, SAN, neither supported nor objected to the call for consolidation of the petitions. Similarly, APM’s lawyer, S. A. T. Abubakar, did not object to the consolidation of the petitions.
Similar debate is expected to come up during the hearing of the cases of the PDP and the Labour Party.
