The All Progressives Congress (APC) told the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) Tribunal on Monday, in Abuja that to dismiss the petition filed against the February 25th Elections by Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate Peter Obi.
The fourth respondent, APC, filed a preliminary objection to PEPC labelled CA/PEPC/03/2023 by party member Thomas Ojo to his PEPC office on Monday evening. In a notice, the petition’s legal team was led by Lateef Fagbemi, SAN of Abuja.
The parties have applied to the arbitral tribunal to dismiss the claims at considerable expense. The grounds are that the claims are unsubstantiated and dubious.
In response, the APC told the Court that the first petitioner, Obi, lacked the requisite locus standi to institute the petition. Their major argument is the LP Candidate was not qualified. They argue that he was not a member of LP at least 30 days before the party’s presidential primary. Therefore, he cannot be validly sponsored by the party.
It said-
“The 1st petitioner (Obi) was a member of PDP until May 24, 2022.
“1st petitioner was screened as a presidential aspirant of the PDP in Apni 2022.
“1st petitioner participated and was cleared to contest the presidential election while being a member of the PDP.
“1st petitioner purportedly resigned his membership of PDP on May 24, 2022, to purportedly join the 2nd petitioner (Labour Party) on May 27, 2022.
“2nd petitioner conducted its presidential primary on May 30, 2022, which purportedly produced 1st petitioner as its candidate, which time contravened Section 77(3) of the Electoral Act for him to contest the primary election as a member of the 2nd petitioner.”
The party argued that Obi was not a member of LP at the time of his alleged sponsorship.
The APC argued that –
“by the mandatory provisions of Section 77 (1) (2) and (3) of the Electoral Act 2022, a political party shall maintain a register and shall make the such register available to INEC not later than 30 days before the date fixed for the party primaries, congresses and convention.”
It stated further that all the PDP’s presidential candidates were screened on April 29, 2022. This was an exercise in which Obi participated and was cleared to contest while being a member of the party.
It argued that the petition was incompetent since Obi’s name could not have been in LP’s register made available to INEC at the time he joined the party.
The APC equally argued that the petition was improperly constituted. Given that they failed to join Atiku Abubakar and PDP. Their claim is the PDP is the necessary party to be affected by the reliefs sought.
“By Paragraph 17 of the petition, the petitioners, on their own, stated that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came second in the presidential election with 6,984,520 votes as against the petitioners who came third with 6,101,533 votes;
“At Paragraph 102 (ii) of the petition, the petitioners urged the tribunal to determine that the 1st petitioner scored the majority of lawful votes without joining Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the petition.
“For the tribunal to grant prayer (iii) of the petitioners, the tribunal must have set aside the scores and election of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar must be heard before his votes can be discountenanced by the tribunal,” it said.
The party, therefore, argued that the tribunal lacked the requisite jurisdiction to entertain pre-election complaints embedded in the petition as presently constituted, among other arguments.
The APC urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition with substantial cost as the same was devoid of any merit. They further claimed that the petition was founded on frivolity.
cc: Daily Post Ng
