The 2023 general elections have come and gone, but controversy and battle about who won the election are still on. This battle had long shifted to the courts, and after several months of legal fireworks, the Presidential Election Petition Court is set to deliver judgment on Wednesday, 6th September 2023.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal, Umar Bangari, disclosed in a statement.
He added that the judgement would be televised live. This is coming a month after the court heard the parties’ closing arguments in the case and two weeks before the expiration of the statutory 180 days for petitions of this nature.
The statement read, “The Court of Appeal wishes to inform the General Public that judgment in the following petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Court will be delivered on Wednesday, 6 September 2023:
•CA/PEPC/03/2023 between Mr Peter Gregory Obi & Anor VS Independent National Electoral Commission & 3 Or.
• CA/PEPC/04/2023 between Allied Peoples Movement VS Independent National Electoral Commission & 4 Ors.
.CAPERC/OS/2023 between Abubakar Atiku & Anor VS Independent National Electoral Commission & 2 Ors.
“In a bid to promote transparency and openness, these judgments will be televised live by interested Television Stations for the public to follow.”
A lot of social media commentators on X, formally Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, have alluded to the fact that the decision to broadcast live the judgement by the tribunal is as a result of the #AllEyesOnTheJudiciary campaign.
According to them, the Judiciary backtracked and decided to broadcast the judgement live after ruling against live broadcast of proceedings based on the #AllEyesOnTheJudiciary campaign.
The promoters of this message are wrong based on the fact that the 2023 Presidential Election Petition is not the first to be televised live. In 2019, the Appeal Court, acting as the election tribunal, televised the judgement of the petition filed by then-candidate Atiku Abubakar of the PDP against the election of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The 2019 Presidential Election Petition Judgement was delivered on September 11, 2019, precisely 177 days after the petition was filed in the now celebrated “INEC Central Server” case. Justice Garba Mohammed JCA delivered the Judgement as he then was.
The PDP, in their petition, challenged the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the 2019 presidential election.
According to the petitioners, Mr Abubakar’s investigation of the central server from the Independent National Electoral Commission showed that the PDP polled 18,356,732 votes instead of the 11,262,978 votes attributed to it by INEC.
The PDP and Mr Abubakar also claimed that they defeated President Buhari, who was declared winner with 15,191,847 votes by INEC.
They also claimed that Mr Buhari lied on oath about his educational qualifications and should thus be disqualified.
INEC denied having a server, and Mr Buhari’s lawyers said the president was qualified to contest the election.
The court, however, dismissed the petition for lacking in merit and upheld the election of Mr. Buhari as the duly elected President of Nigeria.
