The Presidential Election Petition Court has said Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) failed to prove anomalies in their petition against President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima.
Obi had prayed the court to declare him as the candidate that secured the majority of the lawful votes cast with the required constitutional spread of not less than 25% of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states of the federation, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
He pleaded with the court to order a fresh poll, with the exclusion of both Tinubu and the APC, by virtue of their non-qualification to participate in the election.
Respondents in the petition are the Independent National Electoral Commission, President Bola Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
On March 1, INEC announced Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election contested by 18 candidates.
It declared that Tinubu got a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party who got a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
However, on Wednesday, the court said the petitioners “failed to specify the particular polling units and specific places where electoral malpractice occurred”.
Justice Abba Mohammed, one of the members of the tribunal’s five-member panel, said the “petitioners failed to specify the anomalies, the places where the anomalies occurred” as alleged.
It said the petitioners also failed to specify where overvoting occurred and the margin of lead of who won.
According to the tribunal, they also failed to show the polling units where their votes were reduced.
