Tribunal declares Obi’s claim on 25% FCT status ‘Ridiculous, Unmeritorious’

Justice Haruna Tsammani of the Presidential Election Petitions Court sitting in Abuja has berated the legal team of Peter Obi and the Labour Party for making “ridiculous” claim that getting 25% votes in the FCT is mandatory to emerge winner of a presidential election.

Tsammani said the petitioners were also unable to establish non-compliance by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saying they rather based their allegations on unreliable reports from Obi’s witnesses whose motives showed they were interested parties.

The judge also overruled Obi’s claims on wrong computation, inflation of results and overvoting in favour of President Bola Tinubu.

He said out of Obi’s 13 witnesses produced, only three filed their witness statement on oath along with the petition as mandatorily required by law.

He held that the over 18,000 polling unit results downloaded from the IRev portal by Obi’s expert witness is clearly inadmissible because it was not certified by INEC.

He held that Obi’s witnesses hit a “death nail” on Obi claim of suppression of his votes when they admitted not working with hard copies of polling unit results.

On 25 percent votes in FCT, Justice Haruna Tsammani observed that Obi’s legal team interpretation of the word “and” was “completely fallacious” and “ridiculous”.

The judge held that a broad and liberal interpretation should prevail in interpreting the 1999 constitution.

He added that the preamble of the Constitution clearly shows the equality of all Nigerians irrespective of where they live and that votes in FCT was not superior to votes in other states.

He said the provisions of the Constitution shall apply to the FCT as if it were one of the states.

He added that Peter Obi’s entire petition is clearly “unmeritorious”.