L-R: Peter Obi and President Tinubu.
Peter Obi is seeking to disqualify Tinubu on drug-related forfeiture in the US.
Newsone reports that the Labour Party and its Presidential candidate for the 2023 Presidential Election are seeking to disqualify Nigeria’s President-elect, Bola Tinubu on account of his drug-related forfeiture in the United States of America (USA).
This online news platform had reported earlier that the Labour Party presidential candidate filed his petition to challenge the victory of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 25 February election.
Peter Obi, who came third in the election, filed his petition to challenge the outcome of the poll at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital in the wee hours of Tuesday, March 21, 2023.
The petition contains a total of five prayers divided into two categories – two main prayers and three alternative prayers. Obi jointly filed the petition alongside his party, the Labour Party.
The co-petitioners sued the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu, Kashim Shettima (vice-president-elect) and their party, the APC, as the respondents.
Obi alleged that the election was characterised by various irregularities including the non-qualification of Mr Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima to contest the election.
He also alleged that Tinubu failed to win the majority of the lawful votes cast in the election, and just as he could not secure one-quarter of the lawful votes cast in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
The petitioners filed their case on Tuesday, beating the 21-day deadline that began to count on March 1 when INEC declared the winner of the election.
Peter Obi argued as part of the grounds of the petition, that Tinubu, “at the time of the (presidential) election, was not qualified to contest the election.”
The petitioner anchored this claim on the grounds that the Mr Tinubu “was fined $460,000 for an offence involving dishonesty, namely narcotics trafficking imposed by the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, in case no:93C 4483″ between the United States of America and Bola Tinubu.
Newsone Nigeria reports that controversy surrounding the document recently released by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has continued since the beginning of the election campaigns and now after the elections.
The document contained evidence of Tinubu’s alleged involvement in narcotics and money laundering about 30 years ago. The matter, which ended in a settlement, led to Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460,000 in one of the accounts linked to the former governor of Lagos State.
In late November, a spokesperson for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo argued that Tinubu was not indicted in the matter and had no case to answer.
Meanwhile, Newsone recalls that INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, who announced the final 2023 Presidential election results in the early hours of 1 March in Abuja, said Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came second in the election.
Atiku polled a total of 6,984,520 votes in the election, according to the results declared by INEC, Peter Obi of the Labour Party on the other hand, came behind Atiku with a total of 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP came fourth with 1,496,687 votes.
Peter Obi’s legal team which filed the petition against the outcome of the election on Tuesday is led by Livy Uzoukwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who led Atiku’s legal team when the former vice president unsuccessfully challenged the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.