March 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The candidate of the opposition Labor Party for the February presidential elections in Nigeria, Peter Obi, formally filed an appeal on Tuesday against the official results of the elections, which gave victory to the candidate of the government party, Bola Tinubu, amid complaints about irregularities by various opposition parties.
Obi, who came third in the elections – behind Tinubu and Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar, who has also said he will appeal the results – has filed his lawsuit in court election in the capital, Abuja, calling for the official results to be canceled and for the vote to be repeated, as reported by the Nigerian newspaper ‘The Premium Times’.
The lawsuit was thus filed on the last business day to do so, given that 21 days have passed since the electoral commission announced the results. Thus, Obi’s lawyer, Livy Ozoukwu, has stressed that Tinubu “was not qualified to stand in the elections” and has added that he “was not elected by a majority of legal votes cast during the elections”:
For this reason, he has defended that Tinubu “did not achieve a quarter of the votes in the presidential elections in the Federal Capital Territory, which does not allow him to be declared the winner of the presidential elections of February 25, 2023”, at the same time that he has demanded “an order canceling the elections” and demanding a new vote from the electoral commission in which the president-elect “should not be able to participate”.
Tinubu himself defended last week that he won “fair and credible” elections and stressed that “this is not the time for acrimony and recrimination”, amid complaints from various opposition candidates about irregularities. Thus, he defended the right of the other candidates to go to the justice system, while showing his commitment to “work for the benefit of the entire population, whether or not they voted” for his candidacy.
Tinubu will replace Muhammadu Buhari, who was unable to run as he has already served the term limit set by the Nigerian Constitution. The elections also mark the first time since the return of the country to civilian rule in 1999 in which none of the candidates is a former military leader, as was the case with Buhari, who led the country between December 1983 and August. 1985 after a coup.
