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President Bola Tinubu, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, yesterday, told the Supreme Court why it should not admit as evidence Tinubu’s certificate that was released to the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, by the Chicago State University, CSU.
According to them, Atiku did not meet the requisite condition precedent to enable the apex court to admit the documents in evidence.
They spoke before the seven-man panel of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Inyang Okoro, which reserved its judgment on the appeals filed by Atiku Abubakar; and the Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, to nullify Tinubu’s election after all the parties adopted their briefs of argument.
Other members of the apex court panel that heard the matter were Justices Uwani Abba-Aji, Lawal Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Adamu Jauro, Abubakar Tijjani and Emmanuel Agim.
This happened on a day the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, withdrew its appeal against Tinubu, following the panel’s dismissal of the case as frivolous.
Atiku and Obi are challenging INEC’s declaration that Tinubu of the APC was the valid winner of the February 25 presidential election.
They are praying the apex court to set aside the September 6 judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which dismissed their petitions that the election was rigged in favour of the ruling party.
Aside from challenging President Tinubu’s eligibility to participate in the contest, both Atiku, who came second and Obi, who came third, maintained that Tinubu did not secure the majority of valid votes cast during the election to be declared the winner.
Obi and the LP, through their team of lawyers, led by Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, urged the court to uphold their appeal and set aside the judgment of the PEPC.
Obi, in his 51 grounds of appeal, maintained that the PEPC panel erred in law and thereby reached a wrong conclusion when it dismissed his petition.
He said that the panel wrongly evaluated the proof of evidence he adduced before it and occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice when it held that he did not specify polling units where irregularities occurred during the election and the figures of votes or scores that were allegedly suppressed or inflated in favour of President Tinubu and the APC.
He insisted that the PEPC overlooked evidence that established that President Tinubu was previously indicted and fined the sum of $460, 000 in the USA over his involvement in a drug related case.
“Imposition of a fine is not limited to a criminal conviction, as the word, in law, includes a civil forfeiture,” Obi further argued in his appeal and urged the court to overturn Tinubu’s victory.
Atiku’s appeal
Atiku urged the apex court to admit fresh evidence he obtained from the CSU, which he said would establish that President Tinubu tendered a forged certificate to the INEC, in aid of his qualification to participate in the election.
His lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, noted that though the 32-page document, released on the orders of Judge Nancy Maldonado of the District Court of Illinois, Eastern Division, Illinois, US, and handed over to his client on October 2, was not pleaded, he urged the court to admit it in evidence, in the interest of justice.
Uche, SAN, stressed that the issue surrounding the certificate that Tinubu purportedly obtained from the CSU, was weighty, saying there is need for the apex court to focus on doing substantial justice in the matter, instead of rejecting the evidence on the altar of technicalities.
CSU depositions made in a private chamber
However, a member of the apex court panel, Justice Emmanuel Agim, drew the attention of Atiku’s lawyer to the fact that depositions that accompanied the fresh evidence he sought to tender, were made in the chambers of a private legal practitioner in the US and not in the court.
“I expected the school to write, disclaiming the documents. Does the stenographer have the legal authority to administer oath?
“We are dealing with a matter that touches on the national interest of this country,” Justice Agim noted
