By Adadareporters
The Supreme Court judgement that affirmed the election of President Bola Tinubu as president of Nigeria is in line with the provisions of the Electoral Law.
However, the Independent National Electoral Commission should be blamed for raising hopes of Nigerians on the mandatory electronic transmission of election results when it is not constitutionally compulsory.
Malachy Eze, a constitutional lawyer, stated this while reacting to the Thursday’s judgement which upheld the election of Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, and dismissed petitions of Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and LP’s Mr Peter Obi.
According to him, “What is obtainable in normal courts may not be applicable in election matters. The Supreme Court ruled that BiVAS and Irev are not compulsory. This implies that electronic transmission of election results is not enshrined in the constitution. The lesson we can learn from this is to amend our constitution to make the use of BiVAS mandatory. It happened in the case of former governor of Rivers state, Mr Nyesom Wike. He lost at the tribunal for non-use of card reader, then at the appeal, but the apex court ruled in his favour that the use of card reader is not mandatory.
“Inec used this lacuna to deceive Nigerians. They made us think it was compulsory to use Bivas, and used manual where they want to favour a certain politician. Lawmakers can save the situation by making BiVAS a must at elections.”
He advised Atiku and Obi not to abandon Nigeria, adding that both of them benefitted from the Supreme Court judgements. In his words, “Atiku during Obasanjo won his case when the apex court ruled that indictment which Obasanjo’s administration wanted to use to disqualify him was unconstitutional. Obi also won his case at the Supreme Court that his tenure begins to count the day he was sworn in.”
He averred that the apex court justified that the Federal Capital Territory has no special treatment against the thirty-six states of the federation, as well as the failure of the court to admit Atiku’s fresh evidence on the ground of non-authentication by Chicago State University.
