About 24 million voters gathered in February at over 176,000 voting points across the country to choose Nigeria’s next president, but only five persons will cast crucial votes at the first of two court stages in a conference room in Abuja in September.
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The fate of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), will continue to hang in the balance months after he would have been inaugurated as Nigeria’s president on 29 May. His stay in office will still be steeped in uncertainties until the handful of judges that will hear the cases challenging his victory hand down their verdicts.
Election petitions set the stage for a paradox for democracy to break its prime “majority rule”. The choice of the minority can take the place of the decision of the majority.
It gives a reason for the riveting attention millions of Nigerians and foreigners within and outside Nigerian borders are paying to the proceedings of the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, which began sitting on Monday.
The court will review a mix of varied, tricky legal and factual questions that have been raised in three petitions pending before the court.
After the courtroom fireworks that promise to last months, the five jurists will retire to their conference room, a drab, small conclave in the sprawling complex of the Court of Appeal headquarters perched on the fringes of the Three Arms Zone, Abuja – the domicile of Nigeria’s highest executive, legislative and judicial powers – to deliberate and possibly vote to take a final decision, in case there are disagreements on issues thrown up at trial.They will return to a packed courtroom to announce their decision – whether the result of the 25 February presidential election declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on 1 March was valid or not valid.
The court has up to September, the end of a statutory period of 180 days from March when the aggrieved candidates filed their petitions, to give its decision.
The decision is, however, not final, as a displeased party can still appeal to the Supreme Court. But lawyers say the Court of Appeal’s decision sets the tone of the final decision of the Supreme Court, either in concurrence or disagreement.
Using publicly- available information, PREMIUM TIMES presents profiles of the five appeal court jurists who will give the much-awaited vital decision in September.
Source-Premium Times
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