Presidential Election Petition Court dismisses Action Alliance petition against Tinubu’s electoral win

ARINZE NWAFOR

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) has dismissed the petition brought by Action Alliance (AA) against Bola Tinubu’s win at the 2023 presidential elections, Monday.

This is the first petition to be dismissed among the five initial petitions filed before the PEPC.

The AA’s petition was dismissed by a five-member panel of the PEPC led by Haruna Tsammani following a brief confusion over the party’s legal representative.

As the PEPC summoned the AA party, Oba Maduabuchi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, first announced his appearance as legal representative for the party.

Maduabuchi’s declaration was soon challenged as another lawyer, Malachi Umuebe, also announced his appearance as representative for the party.

Maduabuchi resisted Umuebe’s declaration.

The PEPC ruled out Umuebe on the basis that he was not the one who filed the AA’s electoral petition before the court.

After the PEPC confirmed Maduabuchi as the party’s legal representative, he announced that AA was withdrawing its petition.

However, the AA urged the court to nullify the 2023 elections on account of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allegedly refusing to upload the name of Solomon-David Okanigbuan to its portal.

The AA maintained Okanigbuan is their authentic presidential candidate and not Hamza Al-Mustapha, who the INEC had recognised.

Wole Olanipekun, SAN, the lawyer representing Tinubu and Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, representing the INEC, did not object to the AA withdrawing its petition.