It’s been an interesting time in our legal system. For the past week since the conduct of the presidential election on the 25th of February, a lot of events have opened up the legal loopholes which lawyers are currently in courts of law trying to figure out amongst themselves.
During and after the elections, there were clear indications of electoral malpractice and broad daylight election rigging. (I personally believe that it was the worst election that has ever been conducted in the history of Nigeria), but INEC threw caution to the wind and went ahead to declare a winner of the election despite the protests and grievances from the nooks and crannies of the nation.
Firstly, six states of the federation including; Adamawa, Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Sokoto which are all PDP states dragged the federal government and INEC before the Supreme Court of Nigeria over the conduct, collation and announcement of the February 25, 2023, presidential and National Assembly elections. They asked the court to void the announcement of Bola Tinubu as the president-elect by the INEC on the ground that the process by which he was purportedly elected was questionable. Although they have withdrawn the case, maybe because it’s now a post-election matter and they want to bring it before a proper court that has jurisdiction over the matter which is the election tribunal and not the supreme court.
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More so, the Labour Party joining as a co-plaintiff to Mr Peter Gregory Obi has taken INEC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC to court over electoral malpractices. The Labour party strongly believes that they won the presidential election conducted on the 25/26 of February 2023 but only came third through electoral malpractices hence why the court should look into it and rectify the anomalies.
Also, some lawyers and social interest groups have gone to court asking the court to mandate INEC under the Freedom of information act 2011 to make public how the 305 billion nairas that were appropriated to them for the execution of the 2023 election has been expended so far and also for them to account for all the expenses they have incurred for the preparation of the election since 2019 up till date.
Finally, the fact that the APC did not win the FCT is currently a subject of controversy in the court of law. Some lawyers have approached the court to declare that the APC has not met the constitutional threshold to be declared the winner of the 2023 election due to the fact that they did not win the FCT.
On the good side, the Supreme Court while reversing the directives of the CBN/ presidency has declared that the validity of the old naira notes still subsists and should be brought back into circulation by the CBN and should still be in use till the 31st December 2023. The Supreme court agreed with the plaintiffs that the presidency never consulted with the state governors and other relevant stakeholders in the council of state before taking the unilateral decision for currency redesign and that act has caused a lot of unimaginable hardship for the masses.
It has so far been an interesting legal year already for every Nigerian and many Nigerians have been transfixed on knowing what the laws say and what the courts will do. I suggest that at this point, Nigerian judges should consider permitting video recording gadgets in their courtrooms to transmit live court sessions for interested persons to stream from their homes, especially this ongoing election appeal trial since it appears that the whole Nigeria is interested.
Be sure that I will always come back with updates as the events unfold and you will always get to read them first here on Tekedia.
