As reported by the Abuja-based newspaper Punch, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal found that the entire petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, against the acclaimed winner of the election, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was clearly based on rhetoric.
As a result, the court dismissed the petition with prejudice.
Justice Haruna Tsammani, who presided over the panel of judges, dismissed a central argument advanced by the LP in its petition—that a candidate must receive 25 percent of the vote in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) before being declared president—as “fallacious and incredibly ridiculous” in delivering the panel’s ruling.
The presiding judge stated:
Legal representation for the LP argues that the second respondent shouldn’t have been proclaimed victor since he didn’t score 25% or higher on the FCT. This is an absurd and unconvincing argument.
In their petition, the LP and Obi also argued that Tinubu was disqualified from running for office due to an ongoing forfeiture case in the United States and that the results weren’t being transmitted to the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) in real time.
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