Nigerian Tribunal Court Dismisses Labour Party’s Petition Against 2023 Election Results

On September 6, 2023, the Presidential Election Tribunal nullified all the petitions filed by Mr Peter Obi the former Labour Party Presidential Flag Bearer, and Atiku Abubakar the former Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Flag Bearer.

The case was dismissed by Haruna Tsammani who led the five-member bench and said the petition filed against Bola Tinubu lacked merit.

He said that those filed petitions failed to prove that the President-elect was not qualified to contest the election.

He also struck out the petition that talked about the $460,000 forfeiture order of a US court issued against Tinubu that was related to drug trafficking in 1993 did not lead to a conviction so he is qualified to contest in the election.

He also said that the petitioners could not prove that the election involved corrupt practices such as inflation of votes, overvoting, suppression of votes, and wrong computation of votes.

He also said that the argument by Labour Party lawyers which said that Tinubu should not be announced as the winner of the election because he didn't score 25% votes in FCT is baseless.

He further stated that the Supreme Court instructed that the FCT should be treated as though it was a state of the federation.