President Bola Tinubu has assured his aides of the security of their jobs, following the Supreme Court judgement that validated his election victory.
Speaking when the aides, including his spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, visited him at his office in the Presidential Villa in Abuja to congratulate him, Tinubu, on Thursday, greeted the aides, saying: “your job are secured.”
The aides, on their part, congratulated the president on his election victory.
The celebration was climaxed with an Islamic prayer offered by one of the aides.
The Supreme Court, on Thursday, affirmed Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election, dismissing the appeals of his major challengers in the poll – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).
The Supreme Court, yesterday, agreed with the September 6 verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, on all counts. The seven-man panel of the apex court led by Justice Inyang Okoro, in unanimous judgment, resolved the seven issues for determination in the appeals filed by the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; and his Labour Party, LP, counterpart, Mr. Peter Obi, in favour of Tinubu .
The legal tango started in March when Atiku, Obi, the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, and two others approached the PEPC to challenge the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential poll.
The INEC had on March 1 announced that Tinubu of the APC won the presidential contest ahead of 17 other candidates. It declared that Tinubu scored 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar, who got 6,984,520 votes, and Mr. Peter Obi, who came third with 6,101,533 votes.
An elated President Tinubu hailed the apex court’s verdict, saying the court has done justice to all issues put up for consideration and urged all Nigerians to join hands with him to build the country.
However, the PDP and LP criticised the ruling. While the PDP said the apex court has disappointed Nigerians, the LP said that Nigeria’s Legislature and Judiciary have been hijacked by the Executive, warning that democracy is under threat and dictatorship looms.
The apex court, in its lead judgment, prepared and read by Justice Inyang Okoro, held that there was no merit in Atiku/PDP and Obi/LP’s petitions to nullify the outcome of the election.
The court refused to admit Atiku’s fresh evidence from the Chicago State University, CSU, which claimed that Tinubu submitted a forged certificate to the INEC.
The seven issues the court resolved in favour of Tinubu include: INEC substantially complied with the Electoral Act 2022 and the constitution in the conduct of the poll; election cannot be nullified due to unavailability of results on INEC’s IReV portal; failure to secure 25 per cent of votes in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja cannot invalidate a winner’s election; petitioners did not prove allegations of rigging; the issue of APC’s double nomination of Vice President Kashim Shettima had earlier been decided by the court on May 26, 2023; and Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460, 000 drug money was raised when the Respondents had already filed their process.
held that evidence contained in the record of the appeal showed that the Appellants abandoned the duty imposed on them by the law to not only prove the alleged non-compliance, but also to establish that failure of INEC to transmit results of the election through its IReV portal, influenced the outcome of the presidential poll.
The Supreme Court said it had in past judgments, made it clear that there was a difference between election result collation system and the IReV portal.
“Where the IReV portal fails, it does not stop the collation, which up till the last election was manually done,” the court held.
The court held that Atiku did not prove that the INEC did not substantially comply with provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 in the conduct of the election.
