The Court of Appeal in Abuja is currently hearing petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party and Peter Obi, challenging President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the 2023 presidential elections.
The petitioners, Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and the APM, are seeking the nullification of Tinubu’s victory. There are three pending petitions in court, which the five-member panel will decide on today.
Two of the petitions were filed by the leading opposition presidential candidates, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party. The third petition was filed by the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), whose presidential candidate, Chichi Ojei, scored 25,961 votes out of the 28 million votes cast during the election. Two other petitions were filed by the Action Peoples Party (APP) and the Action Alliance (AA) before the close of the window for filing presidential election petitions in March but were withdrawn before hearing began.
The petitions focus on election and pre-election issues, attacking Tinubu’s qualification to contest the election, the legality of his running mate’s nomination, the integrity of the election process, and the threshold of the spread of votes used by INEC to declare Tinubu as the winner.
Both Atiku and Obi individually request the court to declare them the winner or order a fresh poll, with the petitioners requesting that Tinubu and his party, the APC, be barred from participating in it.