FORMER Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Tuesday was at hand when the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja reserved judgement in his petition challenging President Bola Tinubu’s victory at the February 25, 2023 polls.
Justice Haruna Tsammani who led the five-member panel of the court held that a date for judgement in the suit would be communicated to parties.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on 1 March declared Tinubu winner of the presidential election. Atiku however ran to the election court praying it to nullify Tinubu’s victory on grounds of non-compliance with relevant electoral laws and the Nigerian constitution.
In his closing argument at Tuesday’s proceedings, INEC’s lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) had urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s suit for “lacking in merit.” He argued that Atiku “failed to discharge the burden placed on him by law” in proving his allegations against the conduct of the election.
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Contending that Atiku’s case centred on alleged “non-compliance with the electoral act and INEC guidelines and regulations” which he said Atiku failed substantiate, Mahmoud further posited that the deployment of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Results Viewing (IReV) for the presidential election was “successful.”
“The evidence (before the court) showed that these innovations around accreditation and authentication were successful. The information generated by BVAS were stored on the Amazon Web Services (AWS). The evidence before court showed that AWS is the secure and reliable Amazon services across the world,” Mahmoud maintained.
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Asked by the court to clarify issues around electronic transmission of results and uploading of results on IReV, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria explained that Atiku and the PDP “contrived in their mind an electronic collation system. The evidence does not support that. There is no such thing.”
He added that “the glitch which disrupted the real-time upload (of presidential election results from the polling units) only lasted for 4 hours 50 minutes on election day. Second point of disagreement is that this glitch was contrived as a result of human interference. But Atiku failed woefully to establish that there was human interference.
“The evidence before the court showed clearly that the election went well smoothly at the polling units and results were well collated.”
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On the issue of statutory requirement of 25 per cent votes in Abuja, Mahmoud said the argument “is illogical” as it goes against the express provisions of the Constitution. “The FCT must be treated as if it were a State. We submit that the case for noncompliance has not been made, the FCT argument has to fall on its face,” the lawyer argued, praying the court to “dismiss this petition.”
On his part, Tinubu’s lead lawyer, Wole Olanipekun, (SAN) in his closing argument, said manual collation of the presidential election results did not diminish the credibility of the electoral process
“Uploading results to IReV whether manually or electronically plays no role in collation of results; it does not add or decrease the number of votes. Collation is physical and manual,” Olanipekun said, arguing that Atiku had “abandoned his petition,” owing to his inability to prove his case. According to him, Atiku resorted to “attacking” Tinubu’s person instead of proving his allegations.
“The court cannot give to the petitioners what they have not asked in their final written address. It is my submission that Atiku is a meddlesome interloper,” Olanipekun canvassed as he told the court that the former vice president won a paltry one quarter of the two-thirds of votes in Abuja as stipulated in the constitution.
On the mode of transmission of results, Olanipekun said a recent judgement of the Court of Appeal in Lagos, “affirmed the discretion of INEC to apply any methodology in transmission of results.” He prayed the court to “dismiss this petition,” as Atiku merely dumped electoral documents on the court without proving his suit against Tinubu.
On its part, the APC urged the court to dismiss Atiku’s petition for lacking in substance. Its lawyer, and ministerial nominee, Lateef Fagbemi, (SAN) said Atiku’s “witnesses did not dispute the figures (results) reeled out” by INEC. “No one presented an alternative figure of results to counter INEC’s declaration,” he pushed.
Fagbemi pointed out that the issue of 25 per cent votes in FCT “will give overbearing privilege to FCT voters over and above a majority of Nigerians.” He therefore urged the court to affirm Tinubu’s victory and dismiss Atiku’s petition for lacking in merit.
