ABUJA, Nigeria
Nigeria's two main opposition leaders on Monday asked the Supreme Court to cancel last month's tribunal ruling upholding President Bola Tinubu's February election victory, in a last bid to reverse results of a vote widely accepted by the international community.
No legal challenge to the
outcome of a presidential election has succeeded in Nigeria, which returned to
democracy in 1999 after three decades of almost uninterrupted military rule and
has a history of electoral irregularities.
Elections in the past had been
characterized by ballot box snatching, accusations of allowing unregistered
voters to cast ballots, and completely made up results.
Atiku Abubakar of the People's
Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who came second and third
respectively in the vote, took their election fight to the highest court, which
reserved ruling to a date yet to be announced.
On Sept. 6, the presidential
tribunal rejected petitions by Atiku and Obi to cancel the election result over
alleged irregularities.
Lawyers for Atiku and Obi told
the court that the tribunal erred when it declared that it was not mandatory for
the electoral agency to electronically transmit results from polling stations
even though it had promised to do this.
They also argued that Tinubu
did not score 25% of the vote in the federal capital Abuja, which meant he did
not meet the legal threshold to be declared winner.
Under Nigeria's electoral law,
a presidential candidate is deemed to have won if they get no less than a
quarter of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of all the 36 states and
Abuja.
The provision has been
interpreted differently by the opposition and Tinubu's lawyers.
The opposition says a
successful candidate should get 25% of the vote in three quarters of the states
and the same in Abuja while Tinubu argued that the 25% refers to the states and
Abuja combined.
Through his lawyer, Tinubu
urged the Court to dismiss the latest challenge to his victory.
The Supreme Court, which has
the final say in presidential election petitions, has 60 days to pass judgment
from the day of the presidential tribunal ruling.
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