The Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has filed an appeal against the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) that upheld President Bola Tinubu’s victory. Mr. Obi, through his lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, filed a 50 grounds notice of appeal in the Supreme Court, challenging the decision of the presidential election tribunal.
He argued that the PEPC erred in law and reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed the petition he lodged, challenging the outcome of the presidential poll held on February 25. Mr. Obi maintained that the Court of Appeal’s five-member panel, led by Justice Haruna Tsammani, wrongly occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice against him when it held that he did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election.
In his case against Mr Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Obi criticized the PEPC for dismissing his case due to his failure to specify the votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated. He also accused the Justice Tsammani-led panel of relying on paragraphs 4(1) (d) (2) and 54 of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022 to dismiss sections of his petition, which he claimed was erroneous in law.
Furthermore, he claimed that his right to a fair hearing was violated when the lower court dismissed the evidence of his witnesses as incompetent. Mr Obi argued that the panel unjustly dismissed his allegation that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) uploaded 18,088 blurred results on its IReV portal.
Additionally, he alleged that the lower court ignored his claim that certified true copies of documents that INEC issued to his legal team, which contained 8,123 blurred results that consisted of blank A4 papers, pictures, and images of unknown individuals, purported to be the CTC of polling units results of the presidential election. Mr Obi also stated that the justices of the lower court erred in law and caused a miscarriage of justice by concluding that he failed to establish the allegation of corrupt practices and over-voting.