Electoral Commission Appoints 9 Senior Advocates of Nigeria To Defend Presidential Election Results

Nine Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) have reportedly been hired by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to defend the Feb. 25 presidential election results.

Former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Abubakar Mahmoud, will lead the team of advocates, including Stephen Adehi, Oluwakemi Pinheiro, Miannaya Essien, Abdullahi Aliyu, Messrs Garba Hassan, Musa Attah and Patricia Obi, as per The Cable. The ninth advocate's name was not revealed.

Apart from hiring the SANs, the INEC also set a budget of more than N3 billion to fight the legal battle over the national assembly elections and the March 18 governorship and state assembly polls, Punch reported.

Labour Party candidate Peter Obi had filed petitions against INEC and All Progressives Congress (APC)'s candidate Bola Tinubu after the latter was named president-elect.

The petition was marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, in which Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter, have joined plaintiffs while INEC, Tinubu, Member of the Senate of Nigeria Kashim Shettima and APC are the first to fourth respondents.

Tinubu won the election with 8,794,726 votes and Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes, while Abubakar received 6,984,520 votes.

Dr. Yunusa Tanko, who serves as Chief Spokesman of the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, revealed on March 21 that the president-elect has been given a window of 21 days of response before setting a hearing date.

"The tribunal has given 21 days of response. So, it is only after then that they can fix a date for the hearing," Tanko said at that time. "This (duration) is a legal procedure from the tribunal. We have shared a copy of the petition to keep the media abreast of development. I am sure we will get a hearing date after the 21 days."

Following the presidential election results, the Labour Party and PDP had said in separate press conferences that they will be challenging INEC's decision in court.

Labour Party's petition was filed almost a month after the presidential election results were announced on Feb. 25. A close source to the issue disclosed that Obi took his time before filing the petition so that he could collect proper backup for the claims he put on Tinubu.

Earlier this month, Labour Party's National Secretary Umar Farouk revealed that they had hired more than 20 SANs for a legal battle. PDP had also hired SANs, even though they are yet to file a petition officially.