Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has vowed to challenge the the judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) delivered on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said he rejected the PEPC’s judgement of the presidential election held on February 25, 2023, describing it as unjust.
Obi who spoke on Thursday in Onitsha, Anambra, state acknowledged the PEPC’s adherence to statutory time frames.
He expressed respect for the Court’s views and rulings but openly disagreed with the judgment’s rationale and final conclusions.
Obi said, “As petitioners in this case, we respect the views and rulings of the Court, but we disagree with the Court’s reasoning and conclusions in the judgment it delivered. It is my intention as a presidential candidate and the intention of the Labour Party to challenge this judgment by way of appeal immediately, as allowed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“Our legal team has already received our firm instruction to file an appeal against the decision. I shall not relent in the quest for justice, not necessarily for myself but indeed for our teeming supporters all over the country and beyond whose mandate to us at the polls was regrettably truncated by INEC.”
The former Anambra State Governor noted that while the PEPC has rendered its judgment, it is not the final arbiter as the responsibility now falls on the Supreme Court.
“The strength and value of our democracy reside in solid national institutions and our confidence in them noting that Electoral litigations will be almost unnecessary and nonexistent if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) discharges its statutory functions creditably, transparently and with discernible fairness.”
He said it is when that body fails, as it did recently, thus subverting the will of Nigerian voters that the recourse to the judiciary becomes imperative, as is now the case.
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