Justice John Okoro, the chairman of the seven-member panel of Supreme Court justices, dismissed the appeals on Thursday during the live transmission of the judgment on 2023 presidential election appeal monitored by FIJ.
This newspaper reports that the Supreme Court has upturned the appeals seeking the removal of President Bola Tinubu from office.
In dismissing the appeals, the apex court upheld the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPT) judgment in favour of Tinubu.
This Nigeria news platform understands that Justice John Okoro, the chairman of the seven-member panel of Supreme Court justices, dismissed the appeals on Thursday during the live transmission of the judgment on 2023 presidential election appeal monitored by FIJ.
Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi, his counterpart in Labour Party (LP), had appealed to contest the tribunal judgement that upheld Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
The tribunal had held that the PDP candidate failed to plead the facts of his case beyond a reasonable doubt while also dismissing the drug trafficking claims by the LP.
In its ruling on Thursday, Justice Okoro rejected the PDP’s motion for the court to admit fresh evidence to prove Tinubu’s alleged fake certificate, citing failure to meet the 180-day timeframe provided by the constitution to amend applications.
The court stated that the appellants failed to convince the apex court on why it waited until after the lower court had delivered the judgement before bringing the said depositions to the court.
Also according to the justice, the failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload results on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) portal cannot be a ground upon which an election is nullified.
The court dismissed the arguments regarding the constitutional requirement that a presidential candidate must secure a minimum of 25 percent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), among other requirements, to be declared the winner.
Also, the claims on suppression of votes and multiple voting were discarded by the lead justice. The justice resolved all the seven issues brought against Tinubu’s tribunal victory against the appellants.
At press time, all the other justices who had delivered judgement agreed with the lead justice’s ruling.
