On Monday, as the Supreme Court started hearing opposition petitions challenging President-elect Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February presidential election, police blocked motorways in the heart of Nigeria’s capital.
Police took around a hundred peaceful protestors brandishing pre-printed banners stating “Tinubu should not be sworn in” away from Abuja’s Court of Appeal.
Throughout their arguments, the judge, Haruna Simon Tsamani, advised the counsel to “avoid making sensational comments.”
Two of the key opposition candidates, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, have stated that the election should be annulled owing to many breaches of electoral law and other irregularities.
They say that the electoral commission behaved inappropriately by delaying the downloading of results from electronic voting machines at polling locations, making the results subject to manipulation.
Tinubu claims that considering the petitions is improper.
The five judges of the Presidential Election Petition Court convened on Monday to define procedural parameters for the hearing, but they did not consider the case’s merits.
Because the petitions were filed in March, the court has 180 days to provide a decision. This implies we might be waiting for a decision for many weeks.
Several legal efforts to reverse the outcomes of previous Nigerian presidential elections have failed.
Voter turnout in the February election was among the lowest since the collapse of the military regime in 1999.
While election observers from the European Union, the Commonwealth, and other organizations identified a number of difficulties, no charges of fraud were made.
On Monday, a small opposition group withdrawn its petition to challenge the election results unexpectedly and without explanation.
