Tinubu to Obi: your petition against my election fiction
President Bola Tinubu has urged the Presidential Election Petitions Court to uphold his victory in the February poll. This is conveyed in the response by his counsel, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), to the final written address from counsel to his challenger, Peter Obi.
Olanipekun, in his 14-page response, stated that Obi and LP “abandoned” their petition in their final written address. As a result, Olanipekun urged the tribunal to dismiss Obi’s case.
He explained Obi and LP did not address the “purported failure of INEC to supply them Form ECSAS in several polling units” and the allegations of “mutilations, cancellations and outright swapping of votes”.
He said, “Throughout their address, this sweeping statement has not been activated by pointing to any specific Form ECSA, which is caught by their alleged vices, or which contains any figure/votes swapped in favour of the 2nd and 4th respondents, against the petitioners; what the figures are, how the said figures have affected their votes, and how the said conjectured figures have aided the votes of the respondents. ”
Citing Order 22 Rule 5 of the Federal High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 2019, Olanipekun said the provision mandates that “a written address shall…contain…(c) the issues arising from the evidence for determination.”
He added, “From this simple grammatical provision of the rules, it is clear that the petitioners have not formulated any issue for determination capable of being considered or countenanced by this honourable court; and the court can also not consider their address without issues for determination being presented by them.
“Arising from the foregoing, this honourable court is urged, as respondents have done in their final address, to dismiss the petition, not only for the reasons and submissions contained in that address, but also for the clear manifestation and display of abandonment of the entire petition.”
On the money Tinubu forfeited to the United States government in an old drug-related case, Olanipekun argues that a “forfeiture is not conviction-based”.
He said, “That Non-Conviction Based Forfeiture (NCBF) of the type referenced in Exhibit P5 [is] typically the outcome of an in rem action and does not involve trial or conviction for an offence. ”
Olanipekun concluded: “With respect, the entire address, like the petition itself, is a fiction.”
