Deborah Onyofufeke, Abuja
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the February 25 elections, Peter Obi, has filed a request to the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) to among others, cancel the presidential election and conduct a fresh one.

Obi and the LP filed their petition at the PEPC yesterday.

Listed as respondents in the petition are the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); the All Progressives Congress (APC), and its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, who is the President-elect, as well as the vice-president-elect, Kashim Shettima.

The petitioners filed their case on Tuesday, beating the 21-day deadline that began count from March 1 when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the winner of the election.

Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the final results on March 1, in Abuja, said the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar came second in the election.

Atiku polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election, according to the results declared by INEC.

Obi of the Labour Party came behind Atiku with a total of 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.

He alleged that the election was characterised by various irregularities including the non-qualification of Tinubu and his running mate to contest the election.

The LP presidential candidate also alleged that his APC counterpart failed to win the majority of the lawful votes cast in the election, and just as he could not secure one-quarter of the lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

He also alleged that the election was conducted in substantial non-compliance with the provision of the law.

He, therefore, urged the court to either declare him the president-elect, in the belief that he scored the majority of the lawful votes during the election, or nullify the entire election and order a fresh election.

The petition contains a total of five prayers divided into two categories – two main prayers and three alternative prayers.

Obi’s legal team which filed the petition against the outcome of the election on Tuesday is led by Livy Uzoukwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).

Uzoukwu led Atiku’s legal team when the former vice president unsuccessfully challenged the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.

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As part of the ground of the petition, Obi argued that Tinubu, “at the time of the (presidential) election, was not qualified to contest the election.”

The petitioner anchored this claim because Tinubu “was fined $460,000 for an offence involving dishonesty, namely narcotics trafficking imposed by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in case no:93C 4483″ between the United States of America and Bola Tinubu.

Concerning the alleged non-qualification of Shettima, the petitioner cited his nomination for two separate constituencies- Borno central senatorial candidate and vice-presidential candidate for the whole of Nigeria in the same election cycle.

He said the law provided that a presidential candidate shall nominate another person as his associate who is to occupy the office of vice president.

In his two main prayers, he urged the court to declare Tinubu and Shettima, unqualified to contest the February 25 presidential election.

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Under the first prayer, he urged the court to declare that Tinubu did not score the majority of the lawful votes cast in the election.

He asked the court to declare that he satisfied the constitutional requirements to be declared the winner of the 25 February 2023 presidential election after the deduction of alleged illegal votes from Tinubu’s scores.

However, in his third prayer, which he put forward as an alternative prayer, Obi urged the court to cancel the election and order INEC to conduct a fresh one.

But he went further to repeat his claim that he won the election in the prayer which he also put forward as an alternative prayer.

Claiming to have secured the majority of the lawful votes cast during the 25 February election, Obi called on the court to declare him the president-elect and order the INEC to issue him a certificate of return. He urged the court to void the certificate of return “wrongly” issued to Tinubu.