Members of the presidential elections tribunal are said to have received a warning from President Bola Tinubu that the collapse of peace and order in Nigeria may occur if he were to be removed from office.
According to Peoples Gazzette, Tinubu’s attorney, Wole Olanipekun, made this claim in his closing statement before the tribunal hearing the challenge to Tinubu’s victory in the February 25, 2023, presidential election brought by Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
According to the story, President Tinubu’s legal team acknowledged that he did not receive 25% of the votes cast in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja, but claimed that this was insufficient to reverse the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC,’s declaration of his victory.
The lawyers were specifically addressing a section of the Nigerian Constitution that said a presidential candidate must score 25 per cent of votes in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, or Abuja.
The President’s legal team said courts have always been careful about giving extreme interpretation of the Constitution that could spark chaos.
“Our courts have always adopted the purposeful approach to the interpretation of our Constitution, as exemplified in a host of decisions. Even if there was no election in one State (including the FCT), or even if the election of a State/States (including the FCT) is/are voided, the entire election cannot be voided or canceled.
In concluding our arguments on this issue, we urge the court to hold that any election where the electorate exercise their plebiscite, there is neither a ‘royal’ ballot nor ‘royal’ voter; and that residents of the FCT do not have any special voting right over residents of any other State of the federation, in a manner similar to the concepts of preferential shareholding in Company Law.
We urge this court to resolve this issue against the petitioners and in favour of the respondent” the lawyers said