The Labor Party said it had hired at least 20 senior advocates of Nigeria to challenge the results of the February 25 presidential election on behalf of their presidential candidate, Peter Obi....CONTINUE READING
According to party sources, lawyers from different chambers have received documents that will be used as evidence in court.
President-elect and All Progressive Congress candidate Bola Tinubu was announced as the winner of the hotly contested election.
Tinubu had 8,794,726 votes to defeat People’s Democratic Party candidate Atiku Abubakar and flag bearer LP, who received 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes respectively.
But Atiku and Obi rejected the results released by the Independent National Election Commission, each saying in separate press conferences that the election was fraught with violence and large-scale fraud.
Drama took place last Friday when the two main opposition candidates are said to have gone to court to ask permission to examine election materials used in the ballot.
At least six states – Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Sokoto – dragged the federal government to the Supreme Court over the conduct of the February 25 presidential and parliamentary elections before dropping the case sued last Friday.
But the Labor Party’s national secretary Umar Farouk revealed that several SANs have expressed interest in joining the legal battle to prove Obi’s case.
While revealing that INEC had lost its independence for allegedly colluding with the ruling APC to bring victory to Tinubu, Farouk said that LP’s hopes rested on the judiciary to do what was needed.
“We have over 20 SANs ready to join and offer their services for the revival and emergence of a new Nigeria. As I talk to you, our attorneys are working on it.
“But that’s not something we can discuss on the pages of a newspaper. All I can tell you is that we’ve already begun our ‘march’ to the courthouse,” he declared.
Asked if the party leadership and candidates could gather concrete evidence beyond the individual alleged incidents, the APC stated that the Labor Party was being hanged for public sympathy, “The court is not a vase they can break and put whatever they want,” says Farouk.
“If the APC thinks it can get through the courts, then do it. Before that they had predicted the election they would win directly and they declared that they had won. Let’s wait and see. Unlike INEC, the court system is something else.
“We have seen how independent the commission is. But we also need to consider the degree of independence of the judiciary in this serious case. Let’s see what consolation it can bring to the masses. Let’s see if the justice system shatters the hopes of Nigerians like INEC did.
However, Farouk could not give a specific date when the lawsuit would be filed.
“We said Obi was the winner of the record we had in front of us. But INEC did something else. They rushed to execute their pay manager’s plan.
“So we have every reason to claim victory if it is rejected.
