Nigeria’s Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed the election of Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s president in the 2023 general elections.
In a unanimous decision by the judges, the court held that the grounds for appeal by the two major opponents, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), were not sufficient to cancel President Tinubu’s victory at the polls.
Both opponents had asked the court to declare each of them the winner of the election and earlier pleaded with the election tribunal to nullify the declaration of Tinubu’s election by the country’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as elected president.
Atiku sought to present new evidence before the Apex court of alleged forgery against Tinubu but was dismissed because the appeal was not part of the initial prayer at the tribunal and the duration for filing new evidence had elapsed.
Justice John Okoro, head of the Supreme Court panel, said the appellants did not apply for an extension of time or apply to amend their appeal and introduce the issue of forgery and even if they did, it would not have been granted.
According to him, “the lower court, which is bound by the provision of section 285 Sub 6 of the state constitution when seeking to hear election petitions, has lost its jurisdiction, so we cannot look into it.”
On the plea that Tinubu cannot be declared president for failing to win 25% of votes in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which includes the city of Abuja, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier ruling by the Tribunal that Abuja/FCT should be treated as the 37th state in Nigeria for the purposes of calculating the two-thirds majority required for a presidential candidate to be declared the winner of an election.
The court also ruled that the failure of the INEC to transmit results electronically could not nullify the election of President Tinubu. According to the ruling, “the failure to transmit results to iREV did not affect the results of the election.
An appeal by Obi to sack Tinubu over double nomination of vice president Kashim Shettima was also dismissed, as the justices said, because the matter had been addressed in a previous judgement by the Supreme Court.
With the Supreme Court ruling, the president and his team face no other immediate legal obstacles to their duties as legitimate political representatives of the country. However, discontent with the elections, and the decision of the Supreme Court, will remain a fixture for a number of opposition hardliners who remain strong critics of President Tinubu and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
