…At presidential level, nothing changes in nation’s political dynamic
By Tunde Opalana
Another chapter was opened in the chronicles of Nigeria’s political and presidential election annals yesterday.
Their Lordships Justices Haruna Tsammani, Stephen Adah, Monsurat Bolaji-Yusuf, Moses Ugo, and Abba Mohammed delivered judgment on petitions marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023, CA/PEPC/05/2023 and CA/PEPC/04/2023, lodged before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) by the candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi; former Vice President and candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, popularly known as Atiku: as well as the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), respectively in respect of the disputed February 28, 2023 presidential election in the country.
They upheld the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s March 1, 2023 declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), and sworn-in President since May 29 this year, as winner of the February 25 presidential election.
The Daily Times reported that INEC had declared that Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat the two major contenders, Atiku, who came second with a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Atiku and Obi alongside their parties as well as the APM challenged the declaration of Tinubu as President-elect and his eventual inauguration on May 29 as President and Commander- in- Chief of the nation’s Armed Forces.
In the last three months, while proceedings at the PEPC lasted, millions of Nigerians, home and abroad, as well as members of the international community fixed their gaze on the judiciary even as there were intense speculations on where the pendulum of judicial triumph would swing.
Rife was the apprehension of possible invalidation of Tinubu’s victory and need for a rerun, supplementary poll or at most, the declaration of one of the petitioners as outright winner.
However, like a pack of cards, the challengers’ petitions against Tinubu fell under the sledgehammers of yesterday’s PEPC verdict.
On the issue of Tinubu’s alleged drug conviction and forfeiture of $460, 000 in the United States 9US) arising from drug trafficking –one of the stronger points of the petitions against him—the Court ruled that the petitioners failed to provide evidence as Tinubu’s lawyers were able to provide letter from the US Embassy exonerating him of any criminal act in the US.
Dismissing Obi and LP’s claim of vote rigging and falsification of results, the PEPC affirmed that in a presidential election held in 176,866 polling units and 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs), it will be improper not to specify where the claimed irregularities took place.
On the petitioners’ claim that European Union (EU) Election Observers had dismissed the poll as a sham and replete with specified irregularities, the court held that EU’s opinion on the election was not substantive enough to prove irregularities neither was it a yardstick to determine the credibility of an election as they were not involved in the process.
On the means or mode of transmitting the election results, the court ruled that there is no law compelling INEC to electronically transmit election results, saying the electoral umpire can transmit results in any way that pleases it.
Turning to the vexed issue of the status of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where Tinubu failed to score 25 per cent of the vote, PEPC held that securing 25% votes in the FCT should not be a criterium for winning or losing a presidential election as the FCT does not have any special status than any of the 36 states in Nigeria.
The verdict predictably followed patterns of presidential election petitions adjudication in the country.
Historical Facts
Since the beginning of the current democratic experience in 1999, disputes over election results have always ended in court except the 2015 presidential election which was not contested by the losing incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan.
It is noteworthy that the presidential elections held in1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 were all decided in court.
Immediate-past President Muhammadu Buhari, interestingly, was the main challenger in three of those election results disputes.
On February 27, 1999, Nigerians took to the polls to elect a new civilian president to take over from Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, the then military head of state after 16 years of unbroken military dictatorship under different juntas.
The election saw Olusegun Obasanjo, the presidential candidate of the PDP, contest against Olu Falae, the candidate who ran on the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All Peoples Party (APP)’s joint ticket.
At the end of the exercise, Obasanjo was declared winner. He was said to have polled a total 18,738,154 votes to defeat Falae who got 11,110,287.
In March of the same year, Falae filed a suit at the Appeal Court, challenging the then Ephraim Akpata-led INEC’s declaration of Obasanjo as winner of the poll.
Like other politicians after him, he also claimed the election was marred by fraud and bribery and that Obasanjo was unfit to rule because he was once convicted for treason during the Gen. Sani Abacha junta.
In the end, the court struck out his application based on technicalities.
While addressing a gathering in May 2022, Falae claimed that the election result was altered while he was asleep at night.
“I didn’t lose. In fact, I won the election. The military felt safer in the hands of a fellow military man (Obasanjo) as their successor,” Falae said.
Then came the 2003 presidential election –on April 19 of the same year. Obasanjo, the incumbent president, having served one term was seeking re-election. Up against him was Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and a fellow retired Army General.
At the end of the exercise, Obasanjo was declared as having polled 24,456,140 votes while Buhari got 12,710,022 votes.
Dissatisfied with the outcome, Buhari challenged Obasanjo’s re-election at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja in the same year.
On December 20, 2004, and after protracted legal tussle, the tribunal dismissed the petition Buhari filed.
He headed to the Supreme Court, but on July 1, 2005, the apex court delivered a judgment that validated the tribunal’s earlier ruling –that Obasanjo was properly elected.
In April 2007, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of the PDP won a highly controversial presidential election, polling 24,638,063 votes to defeat Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP and Atiku Abubakar of Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
Local and international observers affirmed that the election failed to meet international standards.
When Buhari and Atiku took the matter to the Supreme Court, Justice Idris Kutigi, after listening to the arguments of the lawyers representing both aspirants, reserved his judgment.
With this, Kutigi adjourned the proceeding without setting a specific date for the court’s final decision.
In November 2008, the Supreme Court eventually upheld Yar’Adua’s election as president.
At his inauguration, Yar’Adua admitted that there were lapses and a whole lot of irregularities in the election. He also promised to address the controversy.
He subsequently set up an electoral reform committee to look into the matters raised during the poll that brought him to power.
The next cycle of presidential election was in 2011. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP was announced winner of the presidential election that was conducted in April that year. He polled 22,495,187 votes to defeat Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Nuhu Ribadu of the ACN.
The result was again rejected by the losing parties, and in the end, a court case ensued with Buhari as the main plaintiff.
In a unanimous decision, however, the apex court, led by Justice Olufunmilayo Adekeye, held that Buhari failed to prove his allegation that INEC did not conduct the election according to the provisions of the law.
Consequently, the court dismissed the appeal and affirmed an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal which upheld Jonathan’s victory.
Next up was the March 2015 presidential election.
After many failed attempts at becoming Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari finally emerged winner of the presidential election conducted in March, 2015.
Contesting on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC), a party formed in 2013 from an amalgam of CPC, ACN and a splinter group of the mainly South-East-based All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) Buhari polled 15,424,921 votes to defeat re-election-seeking Jonathan, who garnered 12,853,162.
It was a historic election in Nigeria as no incumbent president had ever lost re-election.
Before the then INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, announced the final result, a remarkable incident happened. President Jonathan, knowing Buhari would eventually be declared winner by the electoral commission, put a phone call across to the former military head of state to congratulate him, ahead of final declaration of results.
The gesture too was another first in Nigeria as such political sportsmanship had never happened at that level before.
2015 nicked another first as the election was the only time in the nation’s history when presidential election results were neither rejected nor challenged in court by a formidable candidate.
In February 2019, Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected as president. He polled 15,191,847 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the PDP who had 11,262,978 votes.
Reacting to the announcement of the incumbent Buhari as winner, Atiku rejected the results, and in the end, sought the help of an election tribunal.
In August 2019, the tribunal rejected Atiku’s bid to overturn the election outcome and instead the judicial body upheld Buhari’s victory as president.
The tribunal also held that Atiku failed to prove his allegations of electoral fraud sufficiently.
Atiku headed for the Supreme Court, but his plea was again dismissed, in October 2019, for lack of merit.
TIMELINE: Supreme Court verdicts on Presidential elections
Obasanjo vs Falae 1999
Election date: February 27, 1999
Date of petition: March 15, 1999
Date of decision by Tribunal : April 5, 1999
Date of decision by Supreme Court: Falae did not approach Supreme Court
Decision time: 30 days
Verdict: Elections upheld
Obasanjo vs Buhari 2003
Election date: April 19, 2003
Date of petition: May 20, 2003
Date of decision by Tribunal: July 28, 2003
Date of decision by Supreme Court: Nov. 14, 2003
Decision time: 69 days
Verdict: Elections upheld
Yar’Adua vs Buhari 2007
Election date: April 21, 2007
Date of petition: August 8, 2007
Date of decision by Tribunal: February 26, 2008
Date of decision by Supreme Court : December 12, 2008
Decision time: 492 days
Verdict: Elections upheld
Jonathan vs Buhari 2011
Election date: April 16, 2011
Date of petition: May 8, 2011
Date of decision by Tribunal : November 12, 2011
Decision time: 188 days
Verdict: Elections upheld
Atiku vs Buhari 2019
Election date: April 16, 2019
Date of petition: March 18, 2019
Date of decision by Tribunal: September 11, 2019
Date of decision by Supreme Court : October 30, 2019
Decision time: 177 days
Verdict: Elections upheld
