Victory for Peter Obi as court overrules APC's petition

The election petition court has ruled that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party was a member of the party when he contested the February 25 elections.

In the opinion of the court, Obi and LP certified the provisions of Obi being a member prior to the polls.

The Court also declared APC’s petition challenging his membership as incompetent, stressing that membership in a political party is an internal affair.

This was read by Justice Abba Mohammed, a member of the tribunal’s five-member panel in Abuja.

Recall that the All Progressives Congress (APC) filed its response against a petition by Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), on the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.

The APC, through Thomas Ojo, a member of the party’s legal team, countered the petition filed by Obi.

Obi had earlier submitted that Tinubu “at the time of the (presidential) election was not qualified to contest the election” owing to the payment of “a fine of $460,000 for an offense involving dishonesty, namely narcotics trafficking imposed by the United States District Court” on him in 1993.

The petition also stated that Tinubu did not score the two-thirds of votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) during the presidential election.

Countering Obi’s petition, APC said the LP presidential candidate was not a valid member of the LP as at the time of the election.

The APC added that the former Anambra governor was a member of the PDP until May 24, 2022, and was screened as one of the party’s presidential hopefuls in April 2022.

“1st petitioner (referring to Peter Obi) participated and was cleared to contest the presidential election while being a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP):

“1st petitioner purportedly resigned his membership of Peoples Democratic Party on 24 May 2022 to purportedly join the 2nd Petitioner (Labour Party) on 27 May 2022. On March 1, Tinubu, the standard bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the presidential election.

Tinubu secured 8,794,726 votes, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had 6,984,520, and Peter Obi of the LP polled 6,101,533.

Obi and LP are complainants in the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, challenging the election that brought Tinubu to power on May 29.

NBA