President Muhammadu Buhari in his final argument at the Presidential Elexction Petition Tribunal Wednesday in Abuja, said no law in Nigeria stipulated that he must produce his certificate to prove his eligibility to contest the February 23 elections.
His argument came against the backdrop of the claim by Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that the President was not qualified to contest the election because he didn’t possess the requisite certificate.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, also in its final argument, said the claim that results of the February presidential election were transmitted to a server was “the greatest lie of this century.”
This is even as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal reserved its judgment on the petition seeking to nullify the President’s re-election.
Adopting his final argument, President Buhari maintained that the 1999 Constitution, as amended, only required him to be educated.
He urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition challenging his election and educational qualifications as grossly lacking in merit and substance.
“The law is well settled and the case-law is crystalized on the point that the 2nd Respondent (Buhari) cannot go beyond provisions of sections 131 and 131(8) of the 1999 Constitution.
“The case-law is replete with decisions of this Court on the subject. We cannot amend the constitution.
“We need to make it very clear at this point that the Constitution and laws of the land do not expect any Certificate to be tendered or attached,” Buhari’s lawyer, Olanipekun, SAN, submitted.
Buhari further relied on a recent judgement the Court of Appeal delivered in a certificate scandal case that involved the governorship candidate of the PDP in Osun State, Senator Ademola Adeleke, to contend that non-attachment of his certificates was not a valid ground to challenge his participation in the February 23 presidential election he won.
He urged the tribunal not to allow itself to be swayed by public opinion and what he described as unnecessary hype being generated by the petitioners.
“Courts of law do not give judgment according to public opinion, but according to the law. They are talking about server, the question to be asked is, where is that server?
“Apart from hype being generated, there is nothing in law that will make this honourable court to grant any of the reliefs being sought in this petition,” Olanipekun added.
On its part, the APC, said it would be bad to create a public impression that President Buhari lacked basic educational qualifications.
“Those who set the standard for secondary education were called; they came and gave the verdict that what the 2nd Respondent has was equivalent to Secondary School Certificate. The witness said so. And there was no follow-up on that. They did not say that the certificate was fake or forged.
“The position is that we take him to be a secondary school leaver,” Fagbemi counsel to the party, submitted.
He insisted that the petitioners failed to call sufficient witnesses, especially polling unit agents and voters, to prove alleged electoral malpractices and non-compliance with the Electoral Act.
He argued further that Atiku did not disprove the allegation that he was not eligible to contest, in view of the fact that he was originally from Cameroon and not a Nigerian by birth.
Nevertheless, the petitioners, through their lead counsel, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu, SAN, urged the tribunal to hold that they successfully made out a case to warrant Buhari’s sack.
Uzoukwu said it was absurd for INEC to claim that it does not have an electronic storage device it kept data from the last presidential election.
“Where was INEC storing the data from accreditation and verification? Again where are they storing data from PVCs running into millions? That is the server!
“To therefore claim that INEC does not have a place for storage of data is laughable and tragic. This goes against the claim and trumpeted neutrality of INEC,” Uzoukwu stated.
He argued that though Buhari claimed that he had three certificates, he failed to tender any of them, adding that both his witness and the Secretary of the military board denied that his set in the Army were asked to surrender their certificates for safe keeping.
“He could go to Cambridge to collect a certificate but could not ask the military Secretary to produce his WAEC certificate.
“As it stands, there is no original certificate, no Certified True Copy, no photocopy, no electronic version of it or even photograph of the certificate.
“And again, according to them, no server. Everything they don’t have. The 3rd Respondent had no defence. The 1st Respondent had no defence, no witnesses.
“I, therefore, must respectfully urge my lords to grant our reliefs because we have proved our case,” the petitioners added.
Specifically, they are seeking the following reliefs: “That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent (Buhari) was not duly elected by a majority of lawful votes cast in the said election and therefore the declaration and return of the 2nd Respondent by the 1st Respondent as the President of Nigeria is unlawful, undue, null, void and of no effect.
“That it may be determined that the 1st Petitioner (Atiku) was duly and validly elected and ought to be returned as President of Nigeria, having polled the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election to the office of the President of Nigeria held on 23rd February 2019 and having satisfied the constitutional requirements for the said election.
“An order directing the 1st Respondent (INEC) to issue Certificate of Return to the 1st petitioner as the duly elected President of Nigeria.
“That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent was at the time of the election not qualified to contest the said election.
“That it may be determined that the 2nd Respondent submitted to the Commission affidavit containing false information of a fundamental nature in aid of his qualification for the said election”.
In the alternative, “That the election to the office of the President of Nigeria held on 23rd February 2019 be nullified and a fresh election ordered.”
In his preliminary objection, President Buhari argued that every aspect of the petition grounded on or relating to electronic data purportedly retrieved or downloaded from INEC’s server were liable to be struck out, “same being incompetent and not rooted in any existing legislation”.
He said: “That there were no incidences of corrupt practices at the election of February 23, 20l9, as alleged by the Petitioners; and that the declaration and return of the respondent President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is valid and in compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, the Electoral Act, and all other Laws, Rules, Guidelines and Regulations, regulating the election.
“That the election of the respondent as the elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is valid and was conducted in substantial compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act.
“Contrary to paragraph 17 of the petition, the respondent states that the petitioners scored a total of 11,262,978 votes, trailing far behind the respondent who scored a total of 15,191,847 votes, with a margin of 3.328.869 votes.”
Contending that he validly earned the number of votes credited to him by INEC, Buhari, said there was “nothing affecting the integrity of the election as there was nothing untoward on the Form ECBDM and no calculation errors can he revealed by any genuine forensic examination or statistical analysis in respect of the election.”
“The 1st respondent was duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast at the election to the office of the President, and shall at the trial, rely on [NBC FORMS 3C8 MA) and ECBE, issued by the 1st respondent at the election.
“The respondent further states that he did not only score majority of lawful votes cast at the election into the office of President of Nigeria at the election of 23rd February, 2019, convincingly, but also had/has the requisite constitutional spread of one-quarter of the total number of votes cast in more than two-thirds of the States of the Federation,” President Buhari argued.
On his part, Yunus Usman, counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said the claim that results of the presidential election were transmitted to a server remained “the greatest lie of this century.”
While adopting his final address at the tribunal Wednesday, Usman said the Electoral Act prohibited the transmission of results electronically.
Explaining that the Act only provided for the manual transmission of results, INEC’s counsel said: “We humbly submit that INEC conducted the presidential election on February 23, 2019, in compliance with the Electoral Act and the petitioners can never disown that.
“The issues of transmitting results electronically or through server has been the greatest lie of this century because my lords, they say the results transmitted were only Atiku and Buhari, whereas about 70 political parties participated in the election.
“The Act itself prohibits the transmission of election results electronically. The Act and the manual only provide for manual transmission and collation of elections results and that is what they did and that is what their witness admitted under cross-examination.”
He also asked the tribunal, led by Mohammed Garba to dismiss the petition which he said was meant to “test waters.”
Meanwhile, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja has reserved its judgment on the petition seeking to nullify President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.
A five-man panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal which heard the petition the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, lodged to challenge the outcome of the February 23 presidential election, adjourned for judgment, after all the parties adopted their final briefs of argument.
The Justice Mohammed Garba-led panel said it would deliver the judgment on a date to be sent to all the parties through their lawyers.
Aside from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, President Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, were cited as 2nd and 3rd Respondents in the petition.
The petitioners had on July 19, closed their case after they called a total of 62 witnesses and tendered over 40,000 documents.
While both INEC and APC told the tribunal that they had no witness, President Buhari, on August 1, closed his defence after he produced seven witnesses that testified before the tribunal.
