By MOHAMMED MOMOH

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Nigeria’s President-elect Ahmed Bola Tinubu and his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), have filed a notice of preliminary objection to a court petition challenging his electoral victory, terming it a scandalous bid on his standing.

The petition was filed earlier this week by Mr Peter Obi, the contender on the Labour Party (LP) ticket in the February 25 presidential election.

Obi had said on April 10 that Mr Tinubu was not qualified to contest the presidential election “because he was a convicted drug dealer in the United States of America”.

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But in their notice of objection, APC and Mr Tinubu submitted that the issue of conviction and forfeiture involving his alleged conviction in 1993 is not a ground for disqualification.

“The issue of forfeiture raised against Mr Tinubu in their petition is already pending before the Federal High Court in suit number FHC/ ABJ/CS/206/2023 between People’s Democratic Party v Code of Conduct Tribunal & 6 Others, and raising the same before this court is an abuse of court process,” Tinubu argued.

Tribunal’s jurisdiction

Mr Thomas Ojo, who is representing both APC and Mr Tinubu, filed the notice and raised the objection to the hearing of the petition by Mr Obi and LP, arguing that the tribunal lacked necessary jurisdiction to entertain it.

APC claimed that the Labour Party lacked the necessary locus standi to initiate the suit against the outcome of the presidential election on the grounds that it did “not present a valid candidate for that election”.

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Tinubu claimed that Mr Obi was, in fact, still a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the time he was sponsored by the Labour Party to contest for the presidency.

The defenders argued that Mr Obi resigned his membership of the PDP on May 26, 2022 and joined the Labour Party the following day.

US case

Mr Obi and LP had in their petition alleged that Tinubu, at the time of the election, was not qualified to contest for election to the office of president as he was “fined the sum of $460,000 for an offence involving dishonesty, namely narcotics trafficking imposed by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in Case No. 93C 4483”.

Mr Obi and LP’s petition was filed by a team of lawyers including 13 senior Nigerian advocates.

The petitioners said they would file documents to prove their allegations against the president-elect.

The documents according to them are “Verified Complaint for Forfeiture, submitted by Michael J. Shepard (United States attorney) and signed by Marsha A. McClellan (assistant United States attorney).

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Mr Obi and LP had also asked the elections tribunal to nullify Mr Tinubu’s election and hold that the APC had no lawful candidate in the presidential poll because the vice president-elect was a senatorial candidate at the time he was nominated as Mr Tinubu’s running mate.

Presidential nomination

The LP says it conducted its presidential primary on May 30, 2022 which produced the Mr Obi as the candidate it intended to sponsor in the general election.

“By section 77(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022, the 2nd Petitioner (LP) is mandated to have submitted its comprehensive register of members to the 1st Respondent (the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC) 30 days before its presidential primary.”

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They argued that the said register of members must have been submitted to INEC on or before April 30, 2022.

“The 1st petitioner as at April 30, 2022 was still a member of the PDP and his name was not and could not have been in the register of members submitted by the 2nd petitioner to 1st respondent”.

Further in their notice of objection, APC and Mr Tinubu argue that the LP and Mr Obi’s petition was defective because they failed to “include the candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Atiku Abubakar, who came second in the presidential election with 6,984,520 votes against the petitioners who came third with 6,101,533 votes”.