ATIKU AND OBI MOVE TO COPY KENYAN AND MALAWIAN RARE DECISIONS
By conducting, finishing, and announcing the winner of the presidential election, INEC complied with the laws of the country. During the collation of results, the electoral umpire is also required by law to reconsider some of the judgments it made in response to requests from specific political parties.
According to reports, there were instances of anomalies, vote suppression, extensive rigging, and manipulations during the election (in the form of rewriting of results and destruction of ballot boxes).
According to the INEC, Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes in total, defeating Atiku and Obi, the PDP candidates who were his closest competitors and received 6,984, 520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
Yet, both the Peoples Democratic Party's (PDP) Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party's (LP) Peter Obi's intention to file a lawsuit in court was made public.
Peter Obi firmly declared that he had won the election and stated the hope of appealing the alleged theft of his mandate before the supreme court, promising to act in accordance with the law.
In Nigeria, meanwhile, very few presidential elections are challenged. This is true even if there must always be a challenge to the validity of the results and the fairness of the process after every election.
Nevertheless, there are two notable exceptions to this generalization that occurred in Africa: the controversial re-election of President Peter Mutharika was declared invalid by the Malawi constitutional court in 2019 and President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election was declared invalid by the Kenyan Supreme Court in 2017. Both decisions required a replay because they were final.
The election commission had announced incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta the victor by a margin of 1.4 million votes when Kenya's Supreme Court nullified it due to irregularities and ordered a new one within 60 days.
The Kenyan presidential election appeared to be the first time on the continent that an opposition's legal challenge against the outcome of a presidential election was successful. Other elections in Africa, including those for the governorship, Senate, and Houses of Assembly, among others, have been annulled or cancelled.
According to the court's ruling in Malawi, there were significant irregularities during the election that led to President Mutharika's election being ruled invalid in May 2019.
The court reinstated former vice president Saulos Chilima and ordered new elections to be held within 150 days.
The majority of international and local observers, as well as members of the international community, did not give the Nigerian presidential election on February 25, 2023, a favorable review; some of them claimed it was tainted by anomalies.
For instance, the American embassy in Nigeria acknowledged that the election results fell short of what Nigerians had hoped for.
Upon the announcement of the outcome, Mary Beth Leonard, the US ambassador to Nigeria, observed that many people are dissatisfied with the election results.
Also, the UK, through its Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, called on the Nigerian authorities to resolve the opposition parties' concerns regarding the election's organization while congratulating Tinubu, the president-elect who INEC had already declared.
The poll was hampered by technological issues, according to several civil society organizations and international observers.
The poll was hampered by technological issues, according to several civil society organizations and international observers.
A group of international election monitors had accused INEC of conducting the polls with little openness.
A group of international election monitors had accused INEC of conducting the polls with little openness.
In a statement published in an official gazette following the election, Joyce Banda, a former president of Malawi, led the Joint Election Observation Mission (JEOM), which was composed of representatives from the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
The organisation noted that despite calls for changes to the Electoral Act 2022, 40 of its members were deployed across all six geopolitical regions of Nigeria to watch the voting process, "Nigerians were mostly not impressed by the conduct of the 2023 presidential and national assembly elections."
Olu Omotayo, president of the Civil Rights Realisation and Advancement Network (CRRAN), said in a statement to reporters that it is feasible for Nigerians to experience such a judgement for the first time, but stressed that the petitioners must be able to demonstrate their claims beyond a reasonable doubt.
"In the history of the world it is very rare where you see courts nullifying presidential elections. In this country, we've seen where they annulled governorship elections on several occasions," he said.
"It's not that [nullifying presidential election] is not possible, but it's just that you must be able to prove whatever you're relying upon. So if you're saying there's a problem with the election, you must prove it because it's something that covers the whole country.
"You cannot just say there were irregularities in Lagos so because of that they should cancel the election. You should be able to prove substantially that the irregularities affected the election all over the country and this is the angle people are looking at, that it is not easy because of the population and how large this country is.
"It will not be easy for the petitioner to prove the burden put on his shoulders because the law is in the view that INEC has done what it is supposed to do. So if you're going to court, just like the presumption of innocence, it's assumed, under our law, that someone is innocent until proven otherwise.
"So there's this presumption that INEC has done well, that once they declare the result they've done what they were supposed to do. So you that are going to the court will now prove that they've not complied with the law and have not done what they were supposed to do. That's why the burden is heavy on you as a petitioner to prove them otherwise. You that have taken someone to court, it is on you to prove.
"Civil matter is different from criminal matter. In criminal matters, it is presumed that this person is innocent and it's on you to prove, but you know this electoral matter is special procedure and not just civil matter per se, so if the law says this is what you've to establish, you must establish it.
"State is easier because it's just a micro of the whole country. So it's easier for people to prove cases of what happened in Local Governments. In
Nigeria we have 774 Local Governments. So I'm not saying it's not possible but it just creates a heavy burden on the petitioner in the presidential election to prove these things.
"According to the law, there's that presumption of regularity on what INEC has done. But that presumption can be challenged by the petitioner. INEC is protected under the law but it's only the court that can say that the (electoral umpire) erred.
"The law is on their side. Political parties were calling on them to review their decision but if INEC feels that they don't have anything to review, it's only the court that can say the Commission has not done well. So it's left for the political parties to convince the court."
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