Verdict Of Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal – My Observations

DR. CHARLES OMOLE

This was a technical judgement by the (Presidential Election Petition) Tribunal and the Judges must be commended for the effort and hard work that went into this case. To make my comment easier to the layman; I will not comment on all aspects of the case but the salient points to me

The tribunal rejected all of Atiku’s claims: that the election was marred by irregularities, that he received more votes than Buhari and that the president did not have a secondary school certificate, a basic requirement to contest the election.

On Case Management:

First of all, Both PDP and APC made too many useless applications in this case. This led to a bloated legal case that was needlessly time consuming and laborious. The nonsense about Atiku not being Nigerian and INEC saying that Atiku’s lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu is not a legal practitioner called to the Nigerian Bar. These were distractions in my view and the Tribunal gave them short shrift by rightly dismissing these spurious claims. And then the many objections filed by both parties enlarged the volume of work for the case.

It seems politicians throw every charge possible into the ring to see which one will stick. This is not efficient. In Kenya, Presidential Election was conducted in August  2017 and their Supreme Court gave a final ruling on the election petitions in September 2017. That is efficiency.

General Observation:

Anyway, let’s get back to Nigeria. Overall the Tribunal verdict seems correct in my view. Let us be open minded about this. The PDP’s failure at the Tribunal is due to a combination of some own goals by the PDP in making some mistakes in its prosecution of this case as well as the limit imposed on the Tribunal by the Constitution and current Electoral Act which meant only manual procedures are valid in law.

In my analysis; INEC was edging its bet when it saw that the new Electoral Act was passed by the 8th Senate, which would have allowed electronic transmission. But PMB vetoed the new Act at the last minute; thus forcing INEC to scrap all its anticipatory electronic procedures that would have been lawful under the proposed Act. This anticipatory preparations could have led to confusion about server or no server.

On the allegations of police and military interference:

The PDP also alleged violence by the Police and Military was used to support rigging by the APC. But the PDP failed to join the Police and Military as parties in the suit. Hence, the Police and Military could not defend themselves in court as required by law. PDP’s claim that as agents of the Government, security forces acted on its behalf. So the Government is vicariously liable. But Vicarious Liability is not known to Criminal Law. It applies only to civil wrong.

In criminal law; it is the soul that Sineth that may die, not the parents of the sinner. The court says it will be improper to decide on the issue without hearing from the parties which have been accused. So my question is; why did PDP not join the security forces as parties?

PDP claimed that many of their agents situated in various polling units were harassed and prevented from doing their job by APC who connived with security agents to conduct massive rigging. PDP also alleged that no real voting took place in for instance Dekina LG area among others. The court however found that the PDP FAILED to call the polling unit agents who would have testified to the fact that they were arrested, harassed or affected by the violence pictured by the petitioners. By not calling any direct eye-witness; PDP got this WRONG.

On the use of smart of card readers & Server:

On the Server issue; the Tribunal’s verdict was forced by provisions of the Electoral ACT that 2019 election was based on. If the amended ACT passed by the 8th National Assembly was signed into law; PDP would have most likely won this element of the case.

PMB dealt a fatal blow to improved election in Nigeria by not signing the new Act last year. But the current Electoral act validates only MANUAL transmission of result. So the Tribunal had no choice but to find against PDP, despite its sympathy with many of Atiku’s argument.

The Tribunal rightly stated that there is no law in place in Nigeria that allows electronic transmission of results or the transmission of result using card reader. There is no provision under the current Electoral Act authorising INEC to transfer election results to any of server. There is also nothing allowing them to use d smart card reader for the collation of results.

So the existence of any server or not is irrelevant. Even if INEC transmitted results to a server; it would not have been admissible and will be invalid in law as it is unlawful to do so.

Focusing so much on the server issue was misguided. Don’t get me wrong; INEC probably transmitted some results to a server as test cases (& lied about it); but this would not have been a lawful step that can be used to validate an election. Hence the result presented by Atiku based on a supposed INEC website could not have been accepted as he claimed they were electronically transmitted. PEPT was correct in its decision in my view.

On qualification of President Buhari: 

The Army stated that Buhari was enlisted with his WASCE. The PDP did not adequately challenge the Army’s claim; especially since they failed to summon the Army secretary as witness on the matter but only relied on newspaper reports. Many of the authorities relied on by PEPT were already decided cases at the Apex court. So its hands were tied by these binding precedents. For example, it was already decided in previous cases that a candidate DOES NOT need to show school certificate.

It was also already decided by precedent that a candidate DID NOT NEED TO HAVE PASSED ANY EXAM; but only sat for it. So PMB did not need to present any certificate. Hence it was found that PMB was qualified to contest. I agree with this.

On Possible Perjury:

On whether Buhari gave false information (about his educational certificate) in an affidavit submitted to INEC, the Tribunal DID NOT give a convincing reason for not finding in favour of PDP in my view. Even though he did not have to produced a certificate but the moment PMB presented an affidavit that stated his certificate was with the Military (but the Military on oath said they do not have it), a possible crime may have been committed. Instead of asking PMB who made the affidavit to substantiate his claim in the face of Army’s denial, the Tribunal went on a frolic of its own to fill in the blanks for itself. This is a suspicious step and an overreach. So the issue here is not whether he had a certificate or not; but whether he lied on oath about it being with the Army. This may be a point explorable at the Supreme Court. PDP may have an arguable case on this ground at the Supreme Court.

On Atiku’s Citizenship:

The Tribunal ruled that its power does not include determining the qualification of a petitioner in an election dispute, adding that its powers was to determine whether a person elected to the office of the president was validly elected and not to query the qualification of the petitioners to have contested the election, whose outcome was being queried. So this was clearly a spurious claim and definitely not a post election matter for the Tribunal. So this claim was rightly dismissed in Atiku’s favour.

On alleged malpractices in the Presidential election:

The allegations by PDP include: compromised printing of election materials, manipulation of ballot boxes, manipulation of card readers, manipulation of accreditation and collation, manipulation of security agencies and militarisation of election, manipulation of election materials’ delivery, arbitrary arrest of petitioners’ supporters and massive thumb-printing of ballot papers, etc. These are grave allegations which needed to be proven to the required evidentiary standard.

The Tribunal found that the evidence put forward by the witnesses called by Atiku and PDP was not sufficient to prove the grave allegation of electoral malpractices claimed. I found this chocking. There were evidence provided by PDP, so I disagree with the tribunal on this.