Ahead of the May 29, 2023 inauguration of the new administration, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal PEPT has fixed Monday 8th May for commencement of hearing of the petitions challenging the declaration of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s president-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
PEPT fixed the date for the hearing to determine if there are any applications before the main hearing will commence.
The presidential candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar; and the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, are challenging INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the president-elect.
Both challengers say the 2023 presidential election was fraught with irregularities.
Atiku wants the court to declare him the president-elect or cancel the election and order a fresh vote.
Obi is asking the same and is, in addition, seeking Tinubu’s disqualification on the grounds that neither he nor his running mate, Kashim Shettima, was qualified to contest the election.
He also says Tinubu could not be declared the winner of the 25 February vote because he failed to win 25 percent of the lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Apart from the two major opposition parties, the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) and a faction of the Action Alliance (AA) are seeking the nullification of Tinubu’s declaration as the president-elect.
The AA claims INEC failed to upload the name of its candidate, Solomon-David Okanigbuan, to its portal for the February election.
INEC recognized Hamza Al-Mustapha as the AA’s candidate for the presidential vote.
All the opposition parties filed their petitions in late March.
The Presidential Election Petitions Court started receiving replies soon after and stopped on 23 April.
In its replies, Tinubu and his party, the All Progressives Congress, asked the court to dismiss all the petitions.
