Presidential Election Tribunal Upholds Yar'adua's Election

Let me get your logic here. There are some laws that can be broken without consequence?? I asked the guy for reason

There are electoral laws that can be broken without consequence?? WOW,  why then have the laws?

Take the argument that the petitioner did not tender the non-serialised ballot papers to the Court, for example. It is in my layman’s opinion that since the petitioner tendered a written evidence to the effect that INEC actually issued a specific instruction to the Printer to print the ballot papers without serial numbers, the burden shifted to INEC to prove that contrary to the petitioner’s claim and the written instruction from Iwu, the papers were indeed eventually printed with serial numbers, and used for the election, by tendering serialised ballot papers used for the election before the Tribunal. It amounts to a travesty of justice to reject available evidence from the petitioner, which was not contested by the respondent in preference for non-existent evidence to the contrary, knowing fully well that INEC as a defendant to the case may have denied the petitioner access to some critical information needed to nail them at the PET. By countering the petitioners’ evidence without counter evidence, it then appears the Tribunal had set out to attain a certain destination at all cost.

That the tribunal did not find it a substantial non-compliance to the Electoral Act that the voter's register used for the election, which is a key tool in the whole process was very irregular as even photos of children featured in many documents, against the requirement that voters should be above 18 years of age is very mysterious indeed. The petitioners also tendered documents before the Tribunal to prove that pre-dated and post-dated result sheets were used by INEC to declare Yar’Adua winner. Curiously again the Tribunal did not find this curious. In choosing to dwell on the manually collated results, the tribunal did not explain the intent of INEC in authenticating differing versions of the same result. The Tribunal did not establish equivocally that the manually collated results tallied with the results upon which Yar’Adua’s victory was announced by INEC and if so, the purpose of the variant versions, pre and post dated.


One of the most sacrilegious statement made by the judge is that ‘Even if the petitioner was able to prove that the Electoral Act was not substantially complied with by the 1st and 2nd respondents (INEC and Prof. Maurice Iwu), the petitioner will have to prove that the said non-compliance has substantially affected the result of the presidential election’ This logic is flawed on the grounds that the means of acquiring the results of the election necessarily must be right before the results could be right as well. If it does not matter to the Tribunal how the results were awarded to the contestants then, one wonders the essence of the Electoral Act. If an Iwu could just sit somewhere and allocate votes with his pen to a choice candidate knowing fully well that it would be impossible for a petitioner to prove to the tribunal how his act affects the authenticity of the results then, we can as well forget about democracy. We should as well just authorize the Chairman of the Electoral Commission to select our leaders on our behalf, thus saving us billions of Naira wasted by the commission in the name of conduction an election under the Act.

The tribunal also contradicted itself when it stated that there is no shred of evidence to prove that elections held at different times, and even if there was, he has not shown how that conferred undue advantage to the 5th and 6th respondents Yar'Adua and Jonathan) to warrant the tribunal to nullify their election," But then the Tribunal acknowledged the fact that INEC tried to exclude the petitioner, but following the April 16, 2007 ruling of the Supreme Court, INEC published his name, ’ Surprisingly the Tribunal failed to conclude the last statement with the fact (which is known to them) that Atiku’s name was included only few hours to the election against the requirement by the Electoral Act that it should be done not less than 30 days before the election day thus slowing down the tempo of his campaign and demoralizing his supporters. Now if this did not confer undue advantage on his (Atiku’s) opponents then what did it confer?

Did INEC indeed provide a level playing field for the petitioner (Atiku) in view of the evidence before the Tribunal that INEC ab initio actively pitched its tent with the ruling party in their quest to disqualify the petitioner from the election until the Supreme Court had to stop them? And if the answer is no then why would the Tribunal want the word to believe that they did not see INEC’s action as running contrary to the letter and spirit of the Elecoral Act that expects it to be an unbiased umpire and thus committing a gross violation of the Act?

Having raised these issues (and I know legal luminaries will find more issues with the judgment), I want to take special note of a statement from the Judge that gives a clue as to the motive of the overall conclusion on the case. He stated that ‘The petition fails and is hereby dismissed. In view of the importance of these cases to the evolving democracy in Nigeria’. It is apparent that the overriding factor necessitating this judgment was not justice in the strict sense of it but rather a compelling desire not to rock the boat. The tribunal may have taken note of the messy scenario of Yar’Adua being compelled to hand over to David Mark, who incidentally is also sitting on a questionable mandate, and the possibility of Mark also being compelled to hand over to another if his appeal fails.