•Court rejects APM’s case and holds judgement on Obi, LP’s appeal.
•Atiku claims that Tinubu’s decision was invalid based on CSU evidence.
Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in February, will need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the accusation of certificate forgery made against the former governor of Lagos State, according to Justice John Okoro, the chairman of the Supreme Court panel hearing the appeals against President Bola Tinubu’s election.
During the hearing of the appeals of the electoral petitions brought by Atiku and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, Okoro delivered the reprimand.
He made this statement in response to the main attorney for Atiku, Chris Uche, SAN, pleading with the court to accept the new evidence that the petitioners had submitted.
Atiku had pleaded to an Illinois Chicago district court to seek the publication of the President’s academic records from Chicago State University in an attempt to overturn Tinubu’s election and disprove the claim that he was unfit to run for president.
Tinubu was accused by the former vice president of fabricating the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from CSU, which was granted in 1979, and submitting it to the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He requested copies of all diplomas that CSU awarded to him in 1979, as well as copies of the diploma that CSU awarded Tinubu in 1979 and diplomas that were awarded to other students that shared the same font, seal, signatures, and content.
Attorneys for Tinubu challenged Atiku’s plea, claiming privacy issues, however they acknowledged that only the certificate should be made public rather than other privileged data.
academic history
However, the academic papers that Atiku submitted to support his Supreme Court appeal of the election petition were ordered to be made public by the US court. The former governor of Lagos State was an academic.
Speaking before the supreme court on Monday, Uche urged the court to accept Tinubu’s academic records as new evidence, arguing that it was a serious problem.
“The Tinubu certificate issue is a weighty, grave, and constitutional one, which the Supreme Court should admit,” stated the senior attorney. I implore the court to accept Atiku’s recent proof of President Tinubu’s CSU academic records.
“The court ought to review Tinubu’s documents and render a verdict free from procedural snags. The court should examine it in its capacity as a policy court and avoid getting bogged down in details.
The chief attorney for Atiku added that the court shouldn’t be bound by the 180-day limit.
Judge Okoro stated that it needs to be shown beyond a reasonable doubt even though he described the situation as criminal in character.
He saw that Chicago State University had sent two contradictory messages.
He claimed that although one letter supported the President’s certificate, the other undermined it.
“This is a criminal matter that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” he declared. Two contradictory letters from CSU exist: one confirming the president’s certificate while the other calls it into question.
Justice Emmanuel Agim, a panel member from another group, noted that Atiku was trying to submit a deposition as evidence, but it was taken in his attorney’s office rather than in court.
The college was supposed to issue a statement disputing the disputed materials. Does the law give a stenographer the power to administer oaths? We are working on an issue that has national significance, he said.
However, Uche maintained that there was no question about the fact that Tinubu’s US attorneys were present during the depositions.
Akin Olujinmi, SAN, the All Progressives Congress’s attorney, informed the court that Atiku shouldn’t be permitted to bring in any documents that were not submitted to the tribunal.
“A document cannot be smuggled into the Supreme Court without first being tendered at the trial court,” he declared. The appeal is without substance and is ill-conceived. It need to be disregarded completely.
The President’s attorney, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, concurred with Uche in asking the court to reject the new documents, noting that INEC was not a party to them.
“In the United States, the depositions are not admissible. It is comparable to depositions, as they occur in Nigeria. INEC was not a party to the deposition, nor was it conducted in court. He reasoned that before the deposition could be admitted as evidence in court, it had to be adopted by the person who had made the deposition.
Additionally, he noted that the 180-day deadline for resolving election petition cases “is like a rock of Gibraltar, it cannot be moved.”
Abubakar Mahmoud, the attorney for INEC, urged the court to reject the appeal and requested it to interpret section 285 of the constitution.
However, the court reserved judgment in the case, with Uwani Aji, Mohammed Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Adamu Jauro, and Abubakar Tijjani among the other panel members.
The Labour Party’s Peter Obi filed an appeal against the tribunal’s ruling upholding Tinubu’s election, and the court similarly deferred ruling in that case.
Through attorneys led by Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, Obi and the LP pleaded with the court to sustain the appeal and overturn the ruling of the Presidential Election case Court that denied their case.
The APC, Tinubu, and INEC had pleaded with the court to reject the appeal as being without merit.
The panel declared that it will notify each party of the judgment date.
The third-place finisher in the election, Obi, said in his 51 grounds of appeal that the PEPC panel had made a legal error and so arrived at the incorrect conclusion when it denied his plea.
He said the panel committed a serious injustice when it determined that he failed to identify the polling places at which anomalies transpired during the election, and that the panel incorrectly assessed the evidence he presented to it.
Obi and the LP also criticized the PEPC for rejecting their case on the grounds that they failed to provide specific numbers for the votes or scores that they claimed were manipulated or manipulated to favor President Tinubu and the APC.
7-person panel
Following the hearing of the parties’ statements, the seven-member panel chaired by Okoro announced that they will be notified of the decision date.
“This appeal is reserved for judgment until a date to be communicated to the parties,” the Okoro-led panel declared.
The Allied Peoples Movement’s plea to overturn the President’s election was dismissed by the highest court.
According to section 33 of the Electoral Act, the party had alleged that Ibrahim Masari, the president’s placeholder nominee, had not been replaced within the allotted 14 days.
Chukwuma-Machukwu Ume, the party’s chief attorney, maintained that Vice President Kashim Shettima was improperly nominated and contended that their appeal was not predicated on double nomination, as the lower court had decided.
However, Okoro questioned him about the APM’s potential advantage from the situation.
“What will you gain if you win this appeal?” he said. There are other appeals that make more significant requests. Nothing more can be gained than giving us tasks to complete. You’re not requesting that we install your nominee as president.
The attorney for APM requested to revoke his appeal.
The counsels for Tinubu, Ibrahim Massari, INEC, and the APC did not oppose.
“The appeal is hereby struck out, having been withdrawn,” Okoro declared.
