PEPT: Lawyer Explains How Tribunal ‘Made INEC A Saint’

Barr Nnadume Offorkansi, a constitution lawyer, Thursday, said Wednesday’s verdicts of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal succeeded in making the Independent National Electoral Commission ‘a saint’.

According to him, the failure of the five-man panel to blame INEC for not living to its promises casts doubts on the judgement, which upheld the election of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.

Speaking during an interview in Enugu, Offorkansi said the judges seemed biased because ‘from the onset of the judgement, they seemed to be attacking the petitioners instead of analysing the merits and demerits in the petitions’.

In his view, “It was more of technicalities, and not moralities. There was never a place that INEC was found to have performed below expectations. How can the presidential and National Assembly elections that held the same day transmitted electronically results of National Assembly but suffered glitches in that of the presidential results? And the tribunal didn’t mention it at all!

“In law, you don’t start passing judgements from the onset. Ordinarily, judges start by analysing evidences from the petitioners, but it was not the case of yesterday. That judgement doesn’t seem to have been written by a judge. They did not mention the difficulties encountered by the petitioners in getting facts from INEC.

“INEC made it difficult for them, including ensuring that the stipulated time was allowed to almost elapse before allowing the petitioners to have access to some vital documents. Even the INEC IREV, as we are talking, is still not with all the results of the elections.

“INEC was never implicated in the judgement. INEC gave the impression that they were going electronic. People were happy, and they kept harping on it. The judgement didn’t talk about it. INEC has been exonerated, which is a pass on them to replicate same next time. My fear is that subsequent elections will be marred by irregularities because INEC can determine how to conduct them and nothing will happen.”

THE WHISTLER reports that petitions challenging Tinubu’s election in the Feb 25 presidential election were quashed by the tribunal for lacking in merit. They were filed by APM, LP and PDP and their respective candidates.