Linus Aleke and Deborah Onyofufeke, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has requested the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) to vary the orders granted to the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, to inspect materials used for the February 25 presidential election.
INEC, in a motion on notice filed on March 4, prayed the court to vary the order which restrained it from tampering with materials used for the election.
According to INEC, without a prompt variation of the inspection order granted to Obi and Atiku, especially the aspect restraining it from tampering with the formation contained in the BVAS, it would be difficult for it to proceed with the scheduled elections.
The electoral body said it needed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the next round of elections.
It further added that the configuration was necessary since the BVAS would also be deployed for the next round of elections, starting with the governorship and state assemblies elections billed for Saturday, as well as other rescheduled elections.
Recall that a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, last Friday, gave Obi and Atiku the nod to have access to all the sensitive materials the INEC deployed for the conduct of the presidential election that was held on February 25.
INEC, in its legal process dated March 4, urged the appellate court, which will sit as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, to vary the order to enable it to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it used for the presidential poll.
The panel, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh made the orders after it heard two separate ex-parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.
Cited as respondents in the matter were INEC, the acclaimed winner of the presidential election, Bola Tinubu, as well as his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Both applications were predicated on Section146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2 &3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, as well as under the inherent jurisdiction of the Court as referenced by Section 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
While Obi, in his application marked CA/PEC/02M/23, which was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr. Alex Ejesieme (SAN), sought six principal reliefs, Atiku’s lawyer, Mr. Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
Specifically, the applicants persuaded the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
They maintained that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of the candidate of the APC, Tinubu.
More so, Obi and Atiku obtained an order from the court granting them leave to apply, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the planned substantive petitions.
On February 25, INEC conducted the Presidential, Senate, and House of Representative elections.
Following the elections, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the ruling APC, was declared the 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 came in second position with a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP the third position polled a total of 6,101,533 votes.
PDP and LP however rejected the outcome of the election immediately citing irregularities in the voting process and numbers while they headed to court to challenge the result.
*As PDP storms INEC headquarters, seeks review of presidential election results
Meanwhile, the opposition PDP yesterday barricaded the entrance to the headquarters of INEC to register its grievances over the allegedly flawed presidential election.
The protest was led by PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, his running mate and Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, the National Chairman of PDP, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, Director-General of PDP Campaign Council and Governor of Sokoto, Aminu Tambuwal, former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, amongst other party chieftains and supporters.
The protesting procession, which commenced at Legacy House in Maitama, was populated by supporters who adorn themselves in a black and black robes and were carrying placards with varied inscriptions to convey their grievances in short phrases.
Some of the inscriptions on the placards which added colour to the peaceful protest included but were not limited to “Nigeria, not for sale; Nigeria has lost confidence in INEC, Our votes must count, No more cheating, INEC keep your promise to Nigeria, INEC release the real result, Democracy must not be murdered, and the will of the people was dashed by INEC.”
The party called for a review of the presidential election results, as a means of restitution for INEC’s flawed elections.
A former National Publicity Secretary of PDP and fourth Atiku Campaign Spokesperson in the 2023 general elections, Mr Kola Ologbondiyan, made this demand during the party’s protest in Abuja.
He said, “Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairperson of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), should review the results as he promised when he was collating the results. He promised to do a review at the end of the collation.
“Unfortunately, he did not do the review, until he made a declaration. We are telling him to fulfill his promise, even though we know that by his nature and by his entity he cannot stand by the truth”.
Also, a chieftain of the party and former Minister of Aviation, Chidoka, told ThisNigeria that PDP is protesting in front of INEC Headquarters in Abuja to register its displeasure over the flawed elections, to forestall future occurrence.
According to him, “On the 11th of March, Nigerians are going to go back to the polls and we want to understand from INEC this system failure that we saw on the day of the presidential election. Whether we are going to witness it again on the 11th of March or not.
“Will Nigeria be able to vote without using BVAS for accreditation and when they finish voting would it happen that results will not be uploaded from the polling units? Will it also happen that the results would be collated, which had not been uploaded and which Nigerians do not have visibility to?”
Corroborating the above view, the spokesperson of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Daniel Bwala, said the presidential election was marred with irregularities, hence the need to draw global attention to the abnormalities of INEC.
He said, “We are here today as law-abiding citizens of Nigeria to express our grievances and to protest the recently concluded broadways show or otherwise called the presidential election in Nigeria.
“This election was marred with irregularities, this election was witnessed by international observers, where all of them unanimously in a joint statement confirmed what we already know. That this election was marred with irregularities, this election was manipulated, there was voter suppression in many places, there was violence in different parts of the country”.
He noted that the PDP is protesting to tell the world that the party is aggrieved about the outcome of the polls.
He said the candidate of the PDP represents millions of Nigerians who wish for better governance, and who pray for a nation where equal opportunity will be open to everyone.
“A nation where the people will be happy to enjoy governance through restructuring. All of the things we sold in our campaign, the electorates believed, they accepted it and they assimilated it and they came out in their millions to vote unfortunately even though we have evidence on the duplicate result sheets given to our agents at the polling units. In the INEC national collation the numbers they tabulated didn’t just add up,” he added.
A chieftain of PDP and former gubernatorial aspirant in Edo State, Mr. Kenneth Imasuagbon, said that Nigerian democracy was raped by INEC under a hot sun.
He rained courses on the Chairman of the electoral umpire, saying that he and his staff shall not know peace again until they die.
He also disparaged the nation’s judiciary, saying, “Nigerian court and INEC are twins, I don’t believe in the Nigerian courts. I am a lawyer, so, I know what I am telling you. From the Supreme Court to the trial courts, they are the same”.
Imasuagbon who spoke to newsmen during the protest in front of INEC headquarters in Abuja noted that Nigeria was now a shame all over the world.
He recalled that Australian newspaper captioned the outcome of our presidential elections in the following way, “a billionaire drug baron wins Nigeria presidential elections,” shame.
*We don’t have allegiance to any party, the electoral body replies
Addressing the protester, INEC has said promised to ‘redress’ the ‘grievances’ of the PDP regarding the outcome of the presidential election.
Speaking through its National Commissioner for Information, Festus Okoye, INEC said the protest letter received from the PDP will be transmitted to the Commission’s Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu.
He said, “I have received this particular protest letter on behalf of the chairman of INEC and I promise you that this letter will be transmitted to him. If there are remedial issues to be dealt with, we are going to deal with those remedial issues.
“But I want to assure you that this commission is a listening commission. This commission is a public trust and this commission belongs to the Nigerian people.
“This commission does not have any allegiance to any political party. We don’t have allegiance to any political party. We don’t have any allegiance to any candidate. Our allegiance is to the people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I want to thank all of you for the peaceful way this protest has been conducted.
“The commission belongs to the Nigerian people and whatever grievances there are, we will look into all those grievances. If there are grievances that can be redressed, we will redress those grievances but I want to plead that all of us should continue to be peaceful and all of us should continue to respect the integrity of the commission and also the integrity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“I am going to go and hand over the protest letter to the chairman of the commission and I want to assure you that the commission will meet over this letter, look into it and address some of the issues.”
But shortly after the INEC authorities received the protest letter from the opposition party and the protesting caravan headed back to Legacy House, PDP alternate headquarters in Abuja, troops of Nigerian Army Headquarters (AHQ), Garrison, took control of Maitama, to forestall breakdown of law and order.
Though the protest was peaceful and ended in praise, the show of force by the Nigerian Army, through their patrol operations in the area under scrutiny scared many would-be hoodlums from causing chaos and anarchy.
The troops, which moved in convoys of heavy and light military armaments scared life out of any prospective hoodlums and the protest was peaceful to the very end.
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*Save your energy for judicial process– APC
Reacting to the protest, the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (APC-PCC) urged the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku, and the party to spend their time wisely by gathering evidence they hope to use in court against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential election.
The APC-PCC made the call yesterday in reaction to the PDP black uniform protest at the headquarters of INEC.
The statement signed by the campaign council’s Director, Media, and Publicity, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, read in part, “Instead of Atiku and his party to wisely spend their time to gather the so-called evidence they hope to present before the courts, they are busy dancing ‘skelewu’ on the streets and causing traffic nuisance to residents of the Federal Capital Territory who were going to work on a Monday morning.”
