President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima have described the appeal before the Supreme Court by the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi as a jamboree meant for media entertainment.
Tinubu and Shettima, through their lead counsel, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), therefore, asked the apex court to dismiss the appeal for lacking in merit, substance and good faith.
Obi had in the 51-grounds of the appeal described the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court, which dismissed his petition on the grounds that he could not provide evidence of his victory in the 18,088 polling units or specify where irregularities took place during the February 25 presidential election, as a miscarriage of justice.
Olanipekun explained that the allegations that were determined by the lower court border on ballot box snatching, vote buying, voters’ intimidation, interference by the military, thuggery, ballot stuffing, violence, disenfranchisement, non-recording of votes in form EC8A, and the non-upload of some unidentified and unspecified results, even in the appellants’ brief were not uploaded electronically to the IREV portal.
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He submitted thus, “The other very remote contention is that the 2nd respondent (APC) did not score 25 per cent of the votes recorded at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“With much respect to the appellants, the petition is more of a fishing expedition; much more of evocation of thunder without dews.
“In short, the entire petition was nothing, but a jamboree of sorts, which was prosecuted more in the media than in the courtroom, and the lower court, being a court of law and not of sentiments, dutifully threw away their petition after a painstaking consideration of the same.”
