Atiku Needed 250,000 Witnesses To Prove Case Against Buhari, INEC – Supreme Court Explains Ruling

The Supreme Court, on Friday, explained why it dismissed the appeal petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, against President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in the February 23, 2019, election.

The PDP and Atiku had approached the Supreme Court to challenge an earlier ruling of the presidential tribunal which upheld Buhari’s election victory.

But the apex court on October 30 upheld the ruling of the presidential tribunal and dismissed Atiku’s appeal for lacking in merit.

The judgement was handed down by a seven-man panel of the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Tanko Muhammad.

At Friday’s proceedings, the Supreme Court hinged its decision to dismiss PDP and Atiku’s appeal on their non-compliance with Electoral Act, failure to call substantial number of witnesses to prove electoral fraud and their inability to prove that President Buhari was unqualified as filed in their petition.

“The appellant cannot just call witnesses. He has to call witnesses who are eyewitnesses and he may have to call 250, 000 witnesses,” said Justice John Okoro who read the lead judgement prepared by CJN Tanko.

The PDP and Atiku had called only 62 witnesses before closing their case at the tribunal.

Regarding Buhari’s qualification, Justice Okoro said Section 131 (d) of the constitution only requires a candidate running for president to be “educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent.”

Explaining what “school certificate or its equivalent” meant, Okoro read through Section 318 of the Constitution: “This include: secondary School Certificate or its equivalent, or Grade II Teacher’s Certificate, the City and Guilds Certificate; education up to Secondary School Certificate level; Primary Six School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and -service in the public or private sector in the Federation in any capacity acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for a minimum of ten years.”

Okoro said the law also allows a candidate who has attended “courses and training in such institutions as may be acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for periods totalling up to a minimum of one year, or has the ability to read, write, understand and communicate in the English language to the satisfaction of the Independent National Electoral Commission to participate in the elections, as well as a person who possesses any other qualification acceptable by the Independent National Electoral Commission,” according to the same section 318.

“A person is not expected to have all the qualifications. Possession of one of the certificates will suffice,” he said.

“The court was right to hold that the second respondent was eminently qualified to contest election. The admission by the appellants witnesses that Buhari rose to the head of the military and served as military president were compelling enough to help the lower court reach its verdict.”

He also faulted PDP and Atiku’s failure to obtain a subpoena for the presentation of the secretary of the military board at the tribunal.

“The fact remains that the petitioners failed to call former the former director army public relations, Brigadier General Olajide Olaleye, to testify.

“What the petitioners did was tendering the documents on the bar, with no one to authenticate it,” he said.

The PDP and Atiku had challenged Buhari’s failure to attach his certificate to the INEC form CF001.

Okoro said in reaction: “Neither the constitution nor the electoral act requires that a candidate must attach his certificate to the form CF001 before he can participate in an election.”

On the issue of the INEC server in which Atiku claimed he obtained electronically transmitted result of the election, Okoro said: “The issue in this appeal is not whether INEC has a website.

“It is not whether INEC posted the results of the presidential election on its website.

“It is whether the www.factsdontlieng.com from which the appellants downloaded the results belonged to INEC.”

“The website, www.factsdontlieng.com, belonged to the whistleblower and not INEC,” the CJN ruled.

Okoro further faulted the PDP and Atiku for failing to agree with the tribunal’s finding that the said website did not belong to INEC but the whistleblower.

“It ought to have dawned on the appellants that the game was up,” he said.

“Therefore, all the data, analysis and conclusions based on the content of the alleged server are of no moment,” said Okoro.

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