The INEC has been accused of waging a proxy war on behalf of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, according to the PDP and Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate.
Chris Uche, SAN, the attorney for the PDP and Atiku, said this in response to the application made by Kemi Pinhero, SAN, the attorney for INEC, during Friday’s proceedings before the Presidential Election Petition Court.
The PDP and Atiku are in court to contest INEC’s declaration that Tinubu won the election on February 25.
Through its legal representatives, the electoral umpire had filed a motion on notice asking the court to throw out some of the accusations Atiku had made in his suit against Tinubu.
In the case contesting his victory, Atiku made 32 complaints against Tinubu, and the electoral authority urged with the court to reject those claims.
The claims that made up 32 paragraphs of Atiku’s appeal, according to INEC, should be discounted by the court for a variety of reasons, including lack of jurisdiction.
However, Uche SAN objected to INEC’s proposal in a counter affidavit and asked the court to reject the electoral body’s request.
In the counter affidavit, he contended that Tinubu’s defense was not INEC’s responsibility.
In particular, Atiku’s senior attorney stated that INEC should have been impartial but erred by taking up Tinubu’s defense against the law and acting as a “busybody and meddlesome interloper.”
In his words, “INEC is fighting a proxy war on behalf of Tinubu, which a neutral body should not do.”
Therefore, he requested that the court deny INEC’s motion because it was an egregious abuse of the legal system, without foundation, and exhibited egregious incompetence.
Justice Haruna Tsammani, the court’s chief justice, has postponed the decision until after the substantive petition’s judgment date.
