APC ANSWERS LP

Long time guys!!!

After the Peter Obi’s Petition hit the internet, a lot of us awaited the response from all four Respondents to the Petition. Well, the long-awaited reply from one of the Respondents has finally surfaced. The said Respondent is the All Progressive Congress. It is my opinion that this Reply did not get as much internet uproar as the Obi’s Petition did. Or is it my imagination?

First and foremost, you have to note that APC is different from Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu. They have two different legal teams, and thus will have two different Replies.

So, let us talk about APC’s Reply, a reply that Labour Party has to respond to. PS: This is how it works, the Petitioner has 21 day after the conclusion of the Election to file his/her petition, while the Respondents have 21 days to respond to the Petition. After receiving the response, the Petitioner again has 5 days to respond to the Respondent. Then, the tribunal is ready to hear all parties. So, expect the Labour Party’s Response to this Reply put forward by the APC.

The first you have to know is that the Reply contains two parts. The first part is what we call “Notice of Preliminary Objection” and the second part is the “Reply to the Petition on the Merit”

Notice of Preliminary Objection is usually an application brought by a party to a suit saying that the Court should not even give a hearing ear to the main case, because it is incompetent, fundamentally flawed or that the Court lacks jurisdiction to hear it. The courts usually determine (decide on it) the fate of the Preliminary Objection first before the merit of the case. Once the Preliminary Objection succeeds, the main suit, as in this case, the Petition, will be thrown out the window.  So, every time you hear technicalities in Judgments, most of the time, this is where they are raised, in the Notice of Preliminary Objection. The Court does not bother to look at the merit of the case if the Notice of Preliminary Objection stands.

So, let us take a look at the Notice of Preliminary Objection (PO) and see.

1. The APC’s counsel (lawyers) are saying that Peter Obi lacks the standing to institute this Petition. Why? Because he was not a member of the party at least 30 days before Labour Party’s Presidential primary to be sponsored by the Party.

Section 77(2) of the Electoral Act says that every Political party shall maintain a register of members. Section 77(3) goes further to say that all Political Party must submit this Register to INEC not less than 30 days before the date fixed for the Party’s primaries. That is all to that section.   APC is saying that since Labour Party conducted its presidential primaries on the 30^th of May, 2022, it must have submitted its Register on or before 30^th April, 2022.  As at 30^th April, 2022, Peter Obi was obviously not yet a member of the Labour Party. He only became a member on the 28^th day of May, 2022. In other words, the “Register” was submitted before he joined the party. APC’s argument is that being that he was not a member at that time, he could not have been Labour Party’s candidate.

I do not know why this argument is in this Reply, considering that the same Court of Appeal has already held in a recent Judgment in a case instituted against Peter Obi that:

“The quest by the Appellant to read into this clear and unambiguous provision what is not there “with the integral interpretation that ‘the person’s name must be on the Register of Members of the Political Party and must have been so for at least 30 days before the party primaries’ has no support in law. It is hornbook law that you cannot read into a statue what is not contained therein”

Maybe APC intends to push this up to the Supreme Court to hear what they have to say on this issue.

2. The second issue raised by APC is that Peter Obi failed to join Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party as parties to the Petition. It is the argument of the APC that the Petition is incompetent for failure to join the former vice-president and PDP, especially with the fact that Peter Obi came third position. Accordingly, in order for Peter Obi and Labour Party to prove that Obi won the election, they have to show that both the President-elect and the former Vice-President did not get the majority votes cast in the election. This would mean dragging the Vice-President (and the votes gotten by him) into his Petition, yet he is not a party in the Petition. In fact, Peter Obi made reference to the votes scored by the former Vice-President.   How then does the former Vice-President defend his votes?

3. The third issue raised by APC is that the paragraphs (the part) in Obi’s Petition alleging fraud and non-compliance in the election are vague, generic, non-specific etc. The major gist here is that all the parts where Obi had talked about forgery or altered results were not specifically pleaded. There is no specific particulars or identity of the scores and polling units mentioned in Obi’s Petition. According to APC, failure of the Petitioners to plead with specific particulars in terms of names, codes, and polling units where the alleged malpractices, non-compliance, irregularities allegedly took place is a gross/fundamental violation paragraph 4(1) (d) of the 1^st Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022. This is why Labour Party did everything it could to get material from INEC. One must be precise in proving electoral fraud.

4. The last issue is that the Tribunal lacks the jurisdiction to enter the issue of Shettima’s candidacy that was raised by Peter Obi. I had clearly explained candidacy of Shettima in one of my previous articles. Why? Because the issue is a Pre-Election matter. (A Pre-Election Matter is any issue that happens within a party that preceded the conduct of the Election, and only the Federal High Court has Jurisdiction to hear such matters) It cannot be brought before the Tribunal. Note: all complaints that has to do with nomination, disqualification and sponsorship of candidates for an election are issues that should be brought before the Federal High Court.

The Tribunal would now have to decide this first, before going into the merits of the Petition. However, we await the Petitioners’ Response to this.

We might discuss APC main response to the Petition another day.

Thanks guys.