After intense political misrepresentations and debates following the announcement of the results of the presidential and national assembly elections on February 25, it seems that everything is now ready for the expected legal war between the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the candidates of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on one side, and by the candidate of the Labor Party (LP), Peter Obi, on the other.
It should be remembered that the last two contenders are dissatisfied with the results of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which declared the APC standard-bearer, Bola Tinubu, as the winner and have decided to seek adequate compensation in court.
According to the results announced by INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, who is also Chief Returning Officer, the top three candidates won 12 states each while Kwankwaso won only one, Kano state. In total, Tinubu reportedly collected 8,794,726 polls with 25% of the vote cast in 30 states, more than the 24 states required by the Constitution.
And on the other hand, Atiku, his closest challenger, garnered 6,984,520 votes, 1.8 million votes, while Obi and Kwankwaso garnered a total of 6,101,533 and 1,496,687 votes to finish third and fourth respectively. However, the distribution of voting patterns showed that Tinubu won elections in Rivers, Borno, Jigawa, Zamfara, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo and Ogun states, but lost his acclaimed homebase, Lagos.
PDP candidate Atiku Abubakar meanwhile won in Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Kaduna, Gombe, Yobe, Bauchi, Adamawa and Taraba states. He also won in Osun, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa states. While Obi won in Edo, Cross River, Delta, Lagos, Plateau, Imo, Ebonyi, Nasarawa, Anambra, Abia and Enugu states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
However, since Tinubu was declared president-elect, some Nigerians have been concerned about the transparency of the process. International observers at the elections had also stressed that the process was poor as large-scale irregularities had been observed.
The opposition parties, especially the PDP and LP, regret that the INEC did not follow its guidelines to send the results obtained by the BVAS directly from the polling stations in real time to the IRev server, leaving room for allegations of manipulation.
In preparation for the legal firecrackers, the three warring factions have already deployed their respective legal teams, which have started the preliminary proceedings in the Abuja court.
As the battle to overturn Tinubu's victory is about to begin in earnest at the Presidential and National Assembly Election Petitions Court in Abuja, two key issues will dominate the arguments of the legal teams assembled by the parties involved in the court.
One is whether the INEC's delay in transmitting election results electronically directly from polling stations to the central server significantly affected the outcome of the polls. And second, the interpretation of the constitutional requirement that a candidate to be declared the winner of the presidential election must obtain 25% in 2/3 of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Before announcing the winner of the election, results compiled by INEC showed that Tinubu would have met the constitutional requirement of 25% of the votes cast in 30 states, excluding Abuja. However, some legal experts have insisted that it is mandatory for any aspiring winner to secure a 25% ballot in Abuja to meet constitutional requirements, arguing on the basis of the special status Abuja is accorded to other states.
