I’ll defend my victory, Tinubu tells court

The President-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, on Tuesday, expressed his readiness to defend his election victory in court.

Consequently, Tinubu and his party approached the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, praying it to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to grant them access to sensitive materials it used for the presidential election that held on February 25.

Cited as respondents in two ex parte applications marked: CA/PEC/05m/23 and CA/PEC/06m/23, which Tinubu filed before the court were INEC and his two major contenders — Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, LP, who came second and third, respectively.

Both Atiku and Obi were equally joined as respondents in ex parte motions marked: CA/PEC/07m/23 and CA/PEC/08m/23, which were filed by the APC.

All the motions were supported with an affidavit of urgency.

Specifically, Tinubu, through his lawyer, Mr. Akintola Makinde, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of the electoral materials to enable him to prepare his defence against petitions that both Atiku and Obi would lodged to challenge his election victory.

“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defence and also make comparison with information contained in INEC’s back-end server,” Makinde told the court.

Counsel for the APC, Mr. Omosanya Kpopoola, also urged the court to permit the party to also obtain copies of the sensitive materials from the electoral body.

The applications came on a day that both Obi and Atiku urged the court to refuse INEC’s request to be allowed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it used for the presidential election.

INEC had insisted that the reconfiguration was necessary since the BVAS would also be deployed for the next round of elections, starting with governorship and state assemblies elections billed for Saturday, as well as other rescheduled elections.

It maintained that without a prompt variation of the order the court earlier granted to Obi and Atiku, especially the aspect restraining it from tampering with formation contained in the BVAS, it would be difficult for it to proceed with the scheduled elections.

However, shortly after INEC, through its team of lawyers comprising of four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, led by Mr. Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to vary the order, Obi and his party, in a fresh application marked CA/PEC/09m/23, sought permission to be allowed to conduct physical inspection of all the BVAS that were used for the presidential poll.

Obi and LP, through their team of lawyers led by Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), said the essence of the application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from Polling Units”.

They specifically applied for “leave to carryout digital forensic and physical  inspection of BVAS, etc”, as well as to obtain the Certified True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.

“My Lords, this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC.

“This is because if they are wiped out, it will affect the substance of our case,” Ikpeazu (SAN), added.

Counsel that represented Atiku and the PDP, Mr. Emeka Etiaba (SAN), said he filed a similar application, though it was not heard owing to a counter-affidavit by INEC which he sought time to respond to.

BVAS dilemma

Meanwhile, INEC’s legal team urged the court to dismiss the fresh application by Obi and the LP, insisting that granting the request would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and National Assembly elections.

It told the court that there were a total of 176,000 BVAS that were deployed to polling units during the presidential election.

“Each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which we need to configure for the forthcoming elections.

“It will be very difficult for us, within the period, to reconfigure the 176, 000 BVAS.

“We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS will be lost as we will transfer all the data in the BVAS to our back-end server.

“We need the BVAS configured. So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections,” INEC’s lawyer, Inuwa (SAN) pleaded.

After it had listened to all the parties, a three-member panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, adjourned all the applications till Wednesday for ruling.

It will be recalled that the panel had in a ruling it delivered last Friday, granted Obi and Atiku the nod to have access to all the sensitive materials the INEC deployed for the conduct of the presidential election.

The duo maintained that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of candidate of the APC, Tinubu.

More so, Obi and Atiku obtained order of the court granting them leave to file the application, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the planned substantive petitions.

Obi had, in the prayer that was struck out, sought an order to restrain INEC “from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until due inspection is conducted and Certified True Copies of them issued”.

Other Justices on the three-member panel of the appellate court that granted the applications, were Justices Haruna Simon Tsammani and James Gambo Abundaga.

INEC had declared Tinubu of the APC as winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.

According to INEC, Tinubu, scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.

Both PDP and LP had since rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.

Under the Electoral Act 2022, any candidate dissatisfied with the return made by the INEC, shall within 21 days after the date of the declaration of the result of the election, file a petition before the tribunal.

An election tribunal shall deliver its judgement in writing within 180 days from the date the petition was filed.

(TNT)