With the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal set to rule in the 2023 election cases before it in about 24 hours, X user, Edmonton Harvey Specter has taken to the platform to share a deep analysis of how he believes the ruling will go.
Read Below…
My PEPT Prediction: As I always said, too much effort was put into technicalities than substance especially by one of the Petitioners, Peter Obi. He came 3rd in the election and is asking the Court to disqualify President Tinubu and either make him President or deluded a rerun.
The problem with that is that he failed to sue the man who came second as a party in the suit. So how does he stand to gain from his original relief when the man who won more states and votes than him has all his votes intact? Curiously, he also isn’t asking the court to declare him President because he scored the highest number of votes.
Rather, he nitpicked a few states a claimed to have won, brought in experts who contradicted themselves and did more harm than good to his case. The quest to get President Tinubu disqualified on the following grounds;
1. Perjury
2. Conviction of a criminal offence Etc won’t work.
I’ll take no 2 for example. For it to be operative, you must have been found guilty for an offence related to dishonesty WITHIN TEN YEARS of the election. Assuming without conceding President Tinubu was actually convicted of drug related charges, the time frame is well outside what’s in the Constitution’s purview. Perjury is a criminal offence but is not a ground to disqualify him.
If you want to prosecute him for it, you wait until he is no longer President. The ado about the 25% Abuja is straightforward and I fully expect the Court of Appeal to rule against the Petitioners. Only one party, Atiku tried to argue substance, ala I won the election but there were irregularities.
But the question is; did he do enough to prove the Irregularities were sufficient to affect the entire outcome of the election? What’s the Bar a petitioner alleging this has to scale in this age of BVAS? I refer you to Oyetola vs Adeleke Supreme Court.
My take is; PEPT rules for President Tinubu in an unanimous decision tomorrow. I am happy to chew crow if wrong.
