The presidential election petition tribunal has struck out the petition challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in the last election.
At its sitting on Wednesday, the tribunal said the petition filed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lacked merit.
Mohammed Garba, the lead judge, said the PDP and Atiku failed to provide enough evidence to support the claims in the petition including those bothered on electoral malpractices.
“I have come to the conclusion that the petitioners have not proved any of the grounds in paragraph 15 as required. For failure of this, this petition is hereby dismissed in its entirety,” he said.
Atiku had gone to the tribunal to challenge the victory of Buhari who was declared winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Among the grounds of his petition was that Buhari was not qualified to contest for president, and that he garnered more votes than the APC candidate.
But the tribunal said Buhari was
“eminently qualified” to contest the presidential election.
It also ruled that the petitioners failed to prove there were electoral malpractices in the election.
The tribunal also said they failed to establish that electoral officials were harassed and that any such harassment influenced the outcome of the election.
Atiku had claimed results from INEC’s server showed he got more votes than Buhari but the tribunal dismissed this claim as well.
“It is my view that whatever results you claim to have gotten belong to a whistle-blower,” the lead judge said.
“It is possible to use scientific method to alter data on a website. Therefore, the petitioner relied on information from a third party (and) the evidence is unreliable because it is hearsay and inadmissible.”
As for the controversial use of the INEC server and card reader machines, the tribunal said there was no subsisting electoral law mandating the use of smart card reader, a situation it maintained, has not changed since 2015.
It also said the card readers could only be used to administer the voter’s card and authenticate the voter but not to authenticate election results.
The five-member panel of the tribunal said the PDP’s application suggesting the use of a central server for the collation of result was, therefore, misconceived.
In part of the petition over the alleged use of a central server, the court noted that the PDP had said that Section 9 of the Electoral Act was amended in 2015.
The panel’s chairman said, “The issue is: Can it truly be said that the section amended actually empowered INEC to transmit election results electronically?
“The court only has a duty to interpret the law. The court has no power to amend the law.”
The court read out the import of the provision, stating that Section 22 (a) does not provide for electronic transmission of results.
The court then read through other sections of the law and added that
“It is undeniable that the transmission of election result is manual at different and all levels of the elections at different stages from the states to the national level.
“There is no provision authorising the first respondent or any of its officers to transfer election results to any of the servers. There is also nothing allowing the first respondent to use the smart card reader for the collation of results.”
“I’m not aware that the card reader machine has replaced the voters’ register”.