ABUJA, Nigeria
Nigeria’s Supreme Court refused Thursday to void the recent election of President Bola Tinubu and dismissed the political opposition’s challenges, which argued that the vote was flawed and that Tinubu was not qualified to seek or hold the presidency.
The court held in a majority
ruling that the grounds of the challenges were “devoid of merits,” ending a
dispute that had put Africa’s most populous country on the edge after the
February election. An appeals court in Nigeria also rejected the petitions last month.
Two other candidates in the
election separately challenged Tinubu’s win, alleging that he failed to meet
the minimum educational qualification to run, did not secure the required
number of votes and that the country’s election commission did not follow its
own provisions in collating and announcing the election results.
During a televised hearing in
Abuja, the Nigerian capital, the Supreme Court dismissed the challenges from
the Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party’s Peter Obi
in their entirety, affirming the position of the election tribunal that
Tinubu’s victory followed the due process.
“It is my view that there is
no merit in this appeal,” Justice Inyang Okoro, who read the ruling of the
seven-member court panel, said of Abubakar’s petition. A similar ruling was
subsequently issued in Obi’s case.
The
court also refused to admit new evidence that Abubakar’s lawyers said proved
their allegations that Tinubu tendered forged academic credentials from an
American university.
The court said the issue of the alleged forgery was not reflected as
one of the grounds of the original petition within the time frame provided by
the Nigerian Constitution.
“Facts and documents which
were not pleaded in the petition have no place in deciding the dispute between
the parties,” Okoro said.
While millions of Nigerians
followed the question of the president’s academic credentials as the major
highlight of the case before the Supreme Court, Thursday’s ruling did not come
as a surprise to many because no presidential election in Nigeria has ever been
annulled.
Some have said the conditions
stipulated in Nigeria’s laws make it difficult to prove irregularities, and
some questioned the independence of the judiciary.
Tinubu’s election was largely described by observers as an improvement from the 2019 election. But the observers also said the delays in uploading and announcing the election results could have left room for ballot tampering.
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