President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima have urged the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal not to annul the presidential election on February 25.
Tinubu and Shettima both stated that the tribunal should not cancel the presidential election due to the dispute regarding the 25% in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
They were urging the tribunal to reject the plea of the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi. Their final address was delivered by their principal lawyer, Wole Olanipekun.
In his speech, Olanipekun called the opponents’ arguments and witness testimony “frivolous, bogus, and based on hearsay.”
He requested that the court dismiss the petition because it lacked both merit and substance.
He emphasized that the petitioners’ “remote” contention that Tinubu and Shettima’s election should be cancelled because they did not receive 25% or one-quarter of the votes cast in the FCT was not supported by any fact known to the law, as the use of “and” in the constitution is conjunctive, not disjunctive.
“The appellant woefully failed to realize that judges do not act like the oracles of life, which are often engaged in crystal gazing and thereafter would proclaim a new Oba in succession to a deceased Oba.
“Judges cannot perform miracles in the handling of civil claims, and at least of all manufacture evidence for the purpose of assisting a plaintiff wins his case,” he said.
