Presidential Election: Court reserves ruling on INEC, Tinubu’s request to dismiss Atiku’s petition

CHIGOZIE IKPO, Abuja

The Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has reserved ruling in applications by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President-elect, Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) seeking the dismissal of the petition by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

INEC, Tinubu and the APC are praying the court either dismiss the petition in whole or some of its paragraphs and other accompanying processes filed by the petitioners for offending the provisions of the law.

The five-member panel of the tribunal led by Justice Tsammani announced this after taking arguments from lawyers to parties,  

The court said the ruling will be delivered on the day of judgment in the main petition filed by the petitioners. 

Moving the applications, Counsel for INEC, Kemi Pinheiro (SAN), Counsel for Tinubu, Yusuf Ali (SAN) and Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) prayed the court to grant the reliefs in their applications, seven in all.

INEC filed two, Tinubu filed three, and APC filed two.

Lawyer to the petitioners, Chris Uche (SAN) in counter-argument, urged the court to dismiss all the applications and proceed to hear his clients’ argument on the merit.

Uche told the court that being an election umpire, INEC lacks the legal right to defend Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the accusations levelled against him, adding that INEC ought to be neutral and defend only the conduct of the election in dispute. 

Uche argued in the counter affidavit that it was not the duty of INEC to do the battle or argue any case for Tinubu who is the 2nd defendant in the petition.

He argued that the electoral body has somersaulted by turning itself into the busy body and meddlesome interloper by taking up the defence of Tinubu against the provisions of the law.

The Senior lawyer maintained that the request of INEC in its defence of Tinubu is not only spurious, and strange but constituted a gross abuse of the court process in addition to lacking in merit.

“INEC ought not to be here to fight the battle of Tinubu, INEC ought to be neutral and at best, defend only the election it conducted and which is the subject of Alhaji Abubakar Atiku’s petition.

”This application by INEC in support of Tinubu lacks merit. It is grossly incompetent and should be outrightly rejected and thrown to the dustbin”.

He, therefore, asked the Court to dismiss INEC’S  motion for being a gross abuse of court process, lacking in merit and grossly incompetent.

The court adjourned further pre-hearing session in the petition till Saturday for parties to agree on the schedule to be adopted for the hearing of the petition.