CSOs to Presidential Tribunal:  Avoid technicalities in your judgment

Coalition of civil rights groups has called on the Justices of the Presidential Election Petition tribunal to deliver their judgment based purely on issues of law, devoid of technicalities.

The coalition comprised of International College of Democracy and Human Rights, Enugu, Eastern Nigerian Democracy and Human Rights Coalition, Port Harcourt, South East Based Coalition of Democracy and  Human Rights Organizations and

International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Onitsha, noted that giving verdicts based on technicalities have always created confusion in the society.

“We, the representatives of the coalitions above in this joint statement, are calling on the Five-Man Panel (Justices of the Court of Appeal) of the 2023 Presidential Election Petitions’ Tribunal to morally and judicially ensure that the verdict of the PEPT is tailored in a decided case as it ought to be, devoid of technicalities and political orbiter or ethno-religious biases and divisions.

“The PEPT verdict must be such that is tailored in living and democratically progressive law. The PEPT Justices must be reminded that the sacred collective assignment given to them by Nigerians is to factually determine the true winner and losers of the 2023 Presidential Election using the laid down rules and procedures including the collected and tabulated results in the Form EC8As and recognized electronic devices.

“It is also the assigned sacred duty of the PEPT Justices to determine the number of the ‘dead votes/results’ in the INEC announced presidential results from the country’s over 176,000 polling units and have them detached and invalidated.

“The awaiting verdict must be rooted in spirit and letters of the law and not cloaked in legal loopholes or technicalities.

“Matters involving presidential poll judicial enquiries are like matters involving) mass deaths requiring judicial probes which must find answers as to.

“The Justices of the PEPT must also be allowed by the Presidency including the country’s spy police chiefs and regular police authorities to freely and morally write and deliver their verdict popularly and independently and refrain from moves strongly suggestive of forcing a scripted verdict on them prepared by the presidential “evil geniuses” to be delivered by PEPT to Nigerians and the world.

“The INEC-supervised rigging of the 2023 Presidential Poll in Nigeria is as worse as the military coups in the Republics of Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso and those going to the equity must at all times go with clean hands”, the group said in the statement.