The Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the 2023 presidential election, dismissing the appeals of his opponents, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.
Supreme Court Upholds Tinubu’s Victory in Presidential Election, Dismisses Atiku, Obi’s Appeals
A seven-judge panel unanimously rejected claims of electoral fraud, violations, and Tinubu’s alleged ineligibility to run for office. The court decisively dismissed all grounds of appeal raised by the opposition, including issues of qualification, Electoral Act compliance, the 25% votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and alleged electoral malpractices.
Expressing his views on the apex court’s decision, prominent Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Robert Clarke criticized the legal representation of Atiku and Obi, citing a lack of due diligence and professionalism.
“I am not saying they (Atiku, Obi’s lawyers) fumbled the case; what I am saying is that they have not displayed a good sense of legal practice,” the legal luminary said on Thursday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Clarke’s scathing commentary underscored his belief that the handling of the case could have been significantly better, expressing that he wouldn’t even permit a junior member of his chamber to bring such a brief before the Supreme Court.
“Where the law is not allowed to put its heads up in a proceeding, it means that there is another law which prohibits their lawyers to have brought such. They know it, they still decided — either to please their supporters and allow such a matter to come before the Supreme Court,” he said.
“I will not allow any junior in my chambers, even one or two years old to carry such a brief to go and argue in court when I have looked into all the facts and the facts are very clear. There is a limitation of time in election matters. You cannot do certain things.”
Clarke noted that Obi and Atiku’s legal team had the opportunity to present their evidence in a lower court, yet they chose not to do so.
“They had the opportunity as a pre-election matter but they never brought it out. They had the opportunity as a matter within a tribunal’s case but they never brought it. They are now coming and bringing matters that should have been argued in the lower tribunal and the Supreme Court will now be reviewing such evidence as an appellate matter and not as an original jurisdictional matter.”
“I am not blaming the lawyers; that is the last thing I would do, but I am sorry to say that the lawyers, with due respect to them, should have done a better job in this regard.
“As the Supreme Court said, if you have facts that were available before the trial started and you did not bring them into the trial court…Therefore, if you intend to use any evidence in the Supreme Court, you must have ensured that such evidence must have passed through the original jurisdiction of the lower court,” he said.
