The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has described a petition filed at the tribunal by the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate, Peter Obi against the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress, APC as the winner of the February 25 presidential election as grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic.
Mr. Obi, the 1st petitioner, and LP, the 2nd petitioner, had sued INEC, Sen. Bola Tinubu, Sen. Kashim Shettima, and All Progressives Congress (APC) as 1st to 4th respondents respectively.
The petitioners are seeking the nullification of the election victory of Tinubu and Shettima in the Feb 25 presidential poll.
The response of INEC who is the first respondent in Obi’s suit was filed on Monday night at the PEPC’s Secretariat by its lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, in Abuja.
The commission prayed the court to either “dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic.”
In its notice of preliminary objection, INEC argued that the grounds on which the petition was based were defective, having regard to the vague and imprecise averments supporting the said grounds.
It said that the ground of the petitioners bordering on non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 and corrupt practices did not disclose a reasonable cause of action for failure to plead specific particulars and figures as to how the alleged non-compliance complained of substantially affected the results of the election.
It said given the above argument, “Prayers 3, 5(i) and 5(11) of the petition predicated on the ground of non-compliance in Paragraph 20(11) of the petition are unguardable.”
