On Monday, a Nigerian court started considering several lawsuits that the opposition had filed to contest the incumbent party’s victory in the nation’s presidential election.
Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress won the February election, and the results are being challenged by opposition parties. The presidential tribunal at the Court of Appeal in the nation’s capital, Abuja, heard their opening comments.
Armed security guards barred the facility’s main entrances as the court session got underway and stopped a few media and attorneys from entering. Some demonstrators brandished Nigerian flags and held up signs as they alleged voting fraud.
“Why I am demonstrating is because of the anger and the pain I have as a Nigerian not allowed to express and enjoy the resources of the land,” said protester James Mike, who accused the Nigerian political class of pilfering the country’s wealth from huge mineral and crude oil resources.
Tinubu received 37% of the vote, and the Nigerian election commision announced his victory in a televised broadcast.
The two leading opposition candidates, however, challenged the outcome, disputing Tinubu’s eligibility and asserting that the results from the 177,000 polling places around the nation had been tampered with.
Analysts and observers agreed that the voting on February 25 was mostly an improvement over Nigeria’s prior elections, but they also noted that there was a chance that the results could have been tampered with because of uploading delays.
Atiku Abubakar, of the Peoples Democratic Party, who came in second, and Peter Obi, of the Labour Party, who came in third, both claimed in separate petitions that the Nigerian electoral commision had broken the law when it announced the results of the election.
While Abubakar has urged the court to disqualify Tinubu, claiming that he possesses a Guinean passport and was therefore ineligible to run for president under the Nigerian Constitution, Obi has claimed that he has proof that he received the majority of votes in the election.
“We are telling the court that he (Tinubu) is not qualified and contrary to the law, he did not put (the election commission) on notice that he has citizenship of another country,” said Paul Ibe, a spokesman for Abubakar.
In Nigeria, an election can only be declared invalid if it can be demonstrated that the national electoral authority generally disregarded the law and took actions that might have affected the outcome.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never annulled a presidential election result, despite observers’ claims that this year’s poll is unusual due to the extensive use of technology.
As the nation waits for the court’s decision and makes preparations for Tinubu’s inauguration as president, tensions have increased because the main opposition party has asserted without providing any evidence that the ruling party is planning to obstruct the court’s procedure.
Even though Tinubu is scheduled to succeed outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, the court challenge is typically a drawn-out procedure that takes months.
