By Paul Ejime
Nigeria’s opostion political parties and their candidates will now look up to the Supreme Court for redress after a five-judge presidential election appeal tribubal on Wednesday 6th September in Abuja dismissed their petitions against the election of President Bola Tinubu on 25th February.
Abubakar Atiku of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and the Allied People’s Movement (APM) had in their various petitions challenged the election Commission’s declaration of Tinubu the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC’s) as winner with about eight million or 37% of the vote.
But the Tribunal in its televised judgement read over 12 hours, dismissed all the petitions.
The reasons for the dismissal include the petitioners’ failure to prove that the vote was rigged or did not comply substantially with the relevant laws and that the petitions lacked merit.
The last option now open to the opposition parties and their candidates is to escalate the case to the Supreme Court, the final destination of such cases under the Nigerian constitution and electoral law.
But after listening to Wednesday’s the mood in the opposition camps is that of frustration with some officials reiterating their lack of confidence in the judiciary.
A leading Catholic prelate Bishop Godfrey Onah speaking on the eve of the judgement urged Nigerians to be realistic in their expectations because the Tribunal judges were not coming from Heaven, but were members of the Nigerian society.
Conspicuous in their absence at the Tribual’s session on Wednesday were candidates Peter Obi, Atiku Abubakar and President Tinubu, who was on a trip to India.
There was tight security at the venue of the long session, with some lawyers representing the litigants as well as officials of the political parties and journalists dozing off intermittently, from apparent tiredness.
Meanwhile, Peter Obi’s Labour Party has rejected the Tribunal’s judgement saying it “did not reflect the peoples desires.”
The Tinubu administration marked its 100 days in office on Wednesday, with many Nigerians complaining against the effects of the administration’s economic policies, especially the removal of subsidy on petrol and the collapse of the previous multiple currency exchange rates of Naira, the national currency.
According to a recent UN report, some 131 million of Nigeria’s estimated 211 million population are under multidimensional poverty.
Unemployment, especially among the youths and inflation are spiralling amid insecurity characterised by kidnapping by bandits and perennial attacks by the extremist Islamic group Boko Haram.
The organised labour led by the Nigeria Labour Congress was observing the second day of a national warning strike, which began on Tuesday in protest against the economic hardships and high cost of living.
Nigeria, a major oil producer in Africa imports refined petroleum products because of widespread corruption and mismanagement of its four dormant local refineries.
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