The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, PEPT, on Wednesday, dismissed the petitions against President Bola Tinubu and affirmed his electoral victory.
The petitions were filed by the Allied Peoples Movement, APM; the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi and his party; and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his party.
Tribunal kicks out APM’s case
The APM dragged Bola Tinubu and vice-president Kashim Shettima to court, challenging Shettima’s eligibility to be Tinubu’s running mate for the 2023 presidential race.
According to the party, the electoral process that led to Tinubu’s declaration as president by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was ‘flawed’ because Shettima had double nominations as a senatorial and vice-presidential candidate for the 2023 general election.
The respondents in the suit are INEC, President Tinubu, Vice-President Shettima, the All Progressives Congress, and Ibrahim Masari who was Tinubu’s placeholder as running mate before the general election.
Delivering the judgment on Wednesday, Justice Haruna Tsammani, chairman of the five-member panel of judges, dismissed the suit for lacking merit.
“The petitioners have no locus standi to challenge the nomination of a candidate by his party,” Justice Tsammani said.
“If a party chooses to nominate a candidate after meeting with the party’s constitution it is not the problem of another party…The petition of APM is therefore without any merit.”
Judges pick holes in Peter Obi’s petition
Peter Obi and his party, the LP challenged Tinubu’s election on various grounds, including vote rigging; compulsory 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT; INEC’s failure to transmit results electronically; and Tinubu’s non-qualification to contest due to an alleged criminal indictment in the United States, among others.
Justice Abba Mohammed said Obi and his party only made “generic accusations of irregularities” in their petition but failed to specify the number of votes affected, the places where it occurred and the number of people disenfranchised.
The Judge also stated that although Peter Obi and the LP claimed to have scored the majority of lawful votes cast in the presidential election, they failed to state the number of lawful votes they scored. “The determination of election is about figures,” the court held.
The judges said they could not find evidence of INEC’s non-compliance with electoral guidelines. According to them, INEC is at liberty to define the mode of results transmission it intends to use and there is no specific provision for the electronic transmission of election results in the Electoral Act 2022.
“By the provision of Section 52 and Section 65 of the Electoral Act, INEC is at liberty to prescribe how results can be transmitted. INEC cannot be compelled to electronically transmit results,” Justice Tsammani held.
On the issue of non-qualification due to an alleged criminal indictment, the petitioners had contended that Tinubu had forfeited $460,000 to the US government in 1993 as an indictment in drug trafficking.
But the tribunal dismissed the petition as a case of civil forfeiture that was not capable of warranting Tibubu’s disqualification from contesting the 2023 general election.
On the issue of securing 25 per cent of votes in the FCT, the tribunal said the petitioners’ interpretation of Section 134(2)(b) of the 1999 constitution is “completely fallacious, if not outrightly ridiculous”. Justice Tsammani ruled that the FCT is “not superior or inferior” to any other state. “The FCT is not more than any of the states of the federation,” he added.
The court also rejected ten out of a total of 13 witnesses called by Obi/LP because their statements were “filed out of time.”
Panel trashes Atiku Abubakar’s petition
Former vice-president Atiku Abubakar challenged Tinubu’s election on most grounds like his LP counterpart, Obi.
He raised the issues of electoral malpractice, failure to score 25 per cent of votes in the FCT, dual citizenship, and indictment in a drug-related crime in the US, among others.
In a similar judgement meted to petitions by Obi, the court held that Abubakar failed to provide several facts fundamentally required to support his petition.
Inter alia, the court said that the PDP candidate, who also claimed to have polled the majority of lawful votes like Obi, failed to state, in strong terms, the total lawful votes he claimed to have scored; where ballot boxes were snatched, the ways and manners the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System, BVAS, machines were manipulated, and specific polling units where the alleged malpractices happened.
On the 25 per cent in the FCT controversy, the court simply adopted its earlier decision on the issue. The case of Tinubu’s drug trafficking was dismissed because the petitioners did not place believable evidence before the court.
On the issue of dual citizenship, Atiku claimed that Tinubu holds Nigerian and Guinean citizenship which is not constitutionally accepted for a presidential candidate. But the tribunal dismissed the matter, saying it was an attempt by Atiku to smuggle in fresh evidence to make up for the details his legal team failed to provide while filing the petition.
The panel also struck out the evidence of some of Atiku’s witnesses because their witness statements on oath were not filed along with his petition.
Tribunal’s judgment
After addressing all issues of the aggrieved contenders, Justice Tsammani ruled that “All issues raised have been resolved against the petitioners; the petitions therefore lack merit. Having found the three petitions to be devoid of merit, the petitions are hereby dismissed.”
“I affirm the return of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the duly elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The parties are to bear their cost.”
- Middle Belt Forum Raises Alarm Over ‘Genocide’ in Central Nigeria - October 21, 2025
- Police Disperse #FreeNnamdiKanuNow Protest in Abuja - October 21, 2025
- AG Fagbemi Says Presidential Clemency Process Still Under Review - October 18, 2025