The Labour Party (LP) said it had engaged the services of no fewer than 20 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to challenge the outcome of the February 25 presidential election on behalf of its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi.
According to sources within the party, the lawyers drawn from different chambers were being furnished with materials that would be used as evidence in court.
The president-elect and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, was announced the winner of the keenly contested election last Wednesday.
Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party flagbearer, who got 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
But Atiku and Obi rejected the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), with each claiming at separate press conferences that the election was fraught with violence and massive rigging.
According to sources within the Party, the lawyers drawn from different chambers, were being furnished with materials that would be used as evidence in court. The identities of the senior lawyers being hired by the LP was not disclosed as at press time.
National Secretary of the Labour Party, Umar Farouk, disclosed some SANs expressed their interest in joining the legal battle to prove Mr. Obi’s case.
While disclosing that INEC had lost its independence through its alleged collusion with the ruling APC by giving victory to Tinubu, Farouk said the LP’s hope was vested in the judiciary to do the needful.
“We have more than 20 SANs that are willing to participate and offer their services for the renewal and emergence of a new Nigeria. As I am talking to you, our lawyers are working on it.
“But this is not something we can discuss on the pages of a newspaper. All I can tell you is that we have started ‘trekking’ to the court,” he said,
Asked if the leadership of the Party and the candidate had been able to garner concrete evidence other than the alleged isolated incidents the APC claimed the Labour Party was dangling to get public sympathy, Farouk said, “The court is not a polling box that they can smash and put in what they want.
“If the APC thinks they can pre-empt the court, let them do it. They had earlier pre-empted the election that they were going to win by hook or crook and they had claimed they won. Let’s wait and see. Unlike INEC, the judiciary is a different thing.
“We have seen how independent the commission is. But we need to also examine how independent the judiciary also is in a matter of this magnitude. Let’s see the solace it can offer the masses. Let’s see if the judiciary has also shattered the hope of Nigerians just as INEC did.”
Farouk, however, couldn’t give a definite date when the case would be filed.
“We are saying Obi is the winner from the record we have before us. But INEC did something else. They hurriedly carried out the plan of their paymaster.
“Therefore we have every reason to claim victory if it is being denied
But the chief spokesman of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Festus Keyamo SAN, said that the president-elect and his camp were not intimidated by the legal threat of the opposition.
He also confirmed that the legal directorate of the PCC was putting together more than 12 SANs to defend his principal in the alleged case of rigging and stolen mandate.
Although he did not reveal the names of members of the legal team, the legal directorate of the Tinubu Campaign Organisation is led by Babatunde Ogala, who could not be reached for comments.
But Keyamo said, “The number of our advocates is around that figure (12). But I can’t confirm the exact figures at the moment. However, it doesn’t matter the number of SANs the Labour Party is parading. It is not a competition.
“I am a lawyer and can tell you specifically that the numbers don’t matter. It is all about the quality of evidence. But I can tell you that we have enough to nullify more of their votes than theirs to nullify our own,” Keyamo said.
