{"id":6296,"date":"2023-04-11T15:20:45","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T15:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/nigerias-ruling-party-seeks\/"},"modified":"2023-04-11T15:30:42","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T15:30:42","slug":"nigerias-ruling-party-seeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/nigerias-ruling-party-seeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria’s ruling party seeks dismissal of Obi’s election challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s ruling party has asked the Appeals Court to dismiss a petition by third-placed candidate Peter Obi who is challenging the victory of president-elect Bola Tinubu following a disputed election in February, court documents showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who came third in the election, and second-placed opposition People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Atiku Abubakar last month separately challenged the results in court.<\/p>\n

The two candidates said the results were fraudulent, citing Tinubu, his ruling All Progressives Congress Party (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as respondents.<\/p>\n

The APC said in a countersuit on Tuesday that Obi’s petition should be dismissed on several grounds, including that Obi was not a Labour Party member when he contested the elections and that he failed to include Atiku as a respondent, making his petition “incompetent.”<\/p>\n

Obi, who was Atiku’s running mate in 2019, left the PDP in May last year to join the Labour Party. The APC is arguing that Obi was not yet a member when Labour Party submitted its members register to the electoral commission as required by law.<\/p>\n

The ruling party is yet to respond to Atiku’s petition.<\/p>\n

INEC declared Tinubu winner with 37% of the votes cast, ahead of Atiku’s 29% and 25% for Obi. No court has overturned presidential election results in Nigeria before.<\/p>\n

Tinubu is set to be sworn-in end of May.<\/p>\n

The Appeals Court is still to nominate judges who will constitute a tribunal to hear the presidential election petitions and deliver a verdict within 180 days from the date the court challenges were filed last month.<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Camillus Eboh, writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe, editing by Christina Fincher)<\/p>\n

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s ruling party has asked the Appeals Court to dismiss a petition by third-placed candidate Peter Obi who is challenging the victory of president-elect Bola Tinubu following a disputed election in February, court documents showed on Tuesday. Labour Party’s Peter Obi, who came third in the election, and second-placed opposition People’s Democratic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-6296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3A0HD-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6384,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6296\/revisions\/6384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}