Hope Democratic Party (HDP) has asked the Supreme Court to void the decision of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), which upheld the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate in the last presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari.
The PEPC had in its judgment given on August 22, 2019 dismissed the petition by the HDP and its candidate, Ambrose Owuru, on the grounds that it was without merit and that the petitioners failed to prove their case; a decision they now appealed at the Supreme Court.
In their notice of appeal, HDP and Owuru want the apex court to void the last presidential election held on February 23, 2019 on the grounds that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, acted unlawfully in holding the election after it allegedly postponed illegally the election earlier scheduled for February 16, 2019.
They want the Supreme Court to uphold a referendum election, which they claimed was conducted by Nigerians on February 16, 2019 (in place of the postponed election) and which the HDP and its candidate purportedly won with over 50 million voice votes.
In the 12 grounds notice of appeal, the appellants equally want the Supreme Court to order that Owuru be sworn-in in place of Buhari on the grounds that he (Owuru) was the duly elected president based on the February 16 referendum.
Buhari, INEC and the APC are listed as respondents in the appeal.
It is the appellant’s contention that the PEPC erred in law when it declined statutory jurisdiction to determine their petition on the grounds that a referendum election is not known to law.
They further contended that the referendum election, allegedly held February 16, 2019, was in accordance with the provisions of sections 14, 132 and 133 of the 1999 Constitution.
The appellants argued that the jurisdiction of the PEPC to hear all matters relating to elections, including referendum election, are provided under section 6, 239, 285 of the 1999 constitution and section 2, 26 and 156 paragraph 2 of the first scheduled of the Electoral Act, 2010 as amended.
They claimed that the PEPC gave wrong interpretation to section 285 of the constitution and proceeded on the wrong assumption of the law that its constitutional duty to determine whether a person has been validly elected as president is restricted only to election conducted by the electoral body.
The appellants also faulted the PEPC on the grounds that its decision was not based on proper evaluation and legal assessment and reflection of their purport and went out to re-invent the respondents’ abandoned pleadings and failure to disprove their case as presented and made out.
They added: “The PEPC failed to see that petitioners, having tendered relevant and unchallenged evidence have discharged the burden of proof on them, even when not strictly required in the face of respondents’ abandonment of their pleadings, requiring no further proof as an admitted case.”
They further alleged that the PEPC failed to properly define or follow the already defined meaning of the word “post-election” and arrived at wrong assumption and conclusion under the law to dismiss their petition.
The PEPC, in its judgment on August 22, 2019 dismissed the petition by HDP and Owuru on the grounds that it was devoid of any scintilla of merit.
A five-man panel of the court held, in a unanimous judgment, that while the first leg of the petition was outside its (the court’s) jurisdiction, the petitioners failed to prove the second leg.
In the first part, the petitioners had sought to be declared winners of the last presidential election on the grounds that they won a referendum purportedly conducted on February 16, 2019 (the date earlier scheduled for the presidential election, before it was later held on February 23, 2019).
The News Guru
