Court indefinitely adjourns judgment in APM’s petition calling for Tinubu’s disqualification

Judgment on the appeal filed by the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, to have President Bola Ahmed Tinubu disqualified from the presidential election held on February 25 due to his unlawful candidacy was reserved by the Presidential Election appeal Court on Friday.

After the parties adopted their closing briefs, in which they formally asked the court to do one of several things, the hearing was postponed indefinitely.

Tinubu’s Vice Presidential candidate, Kashim Shettima, is being challenged by APM in court for allegedly allowing himself to be nominated twice for various seats.

After one Kabiru Masari, the initial Vice Presidential candidate to Tinubu, withdrew from the race, Shettima was first nominated by the All Progressives Congress, APC, as a candidate for the Borno Central Senatorial District.

The APM’s complaint was that Shettima and the APC committed electoral fraud by allegedly nominating themselves twice.

APM, represented by Andrew Malgwu SAN, requested the court to annul the nomination of Tinubu and Shettima on the grounds of unlawful, illegal, and unjustified nomination at Friday’s hearings when final addresses were approved.

However, INEC, the first respondent in the petition, asked the court to throw out the case because it was without merit.

Lateef Olasunkanmi Fagbemi SAN, on behalf of the APC, argued that the petition should be dismissed because it is groundless, annoying, and unjustified.

Fagbemi contended that the petition was moot since the Supreme Court had already ruled that political parties had no right to meddle in one another’s nominating processes.

Tinubu and Shettima, who were represented by renowned attorney Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN, made a similar argument, demanding that the APM’s petition be thrown out on the grounds that it should never have been filed.

After the Supreme Court ruled that no party has the authority to meddle in how another party nominated its candidates for electoral seats, Olanipekun told the Court that the petition ought to have been withdrawn honorably.

The Presiding Justice, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, postponed the verdict until further notice shortly after the proceedings concluded.

A notification would be sent out to the lawyers present, Justice Tsammani assured them.