On Wednesday, the Presidential Election Tribunal dismissed Peter Obi and the Labour Party’s suit alleging President Bola Tinubu’s alleged participation in narcotics trafficking in the United States.
According to Gistlover, the petitioners claimed Tinubu forfeited $460,000 in the United States after being charged for narcotics trafficking.
While arguing that Tinubu cannot be disqualified because of his forfeiture of narcotics money in the United States, the tribunal judges stated that the evidence (Exhibit P5) presented by Peter Obi and LP, as well as other petitioners, demonstrated that “it was a civil forfeiture proceeding.”
“The order of forfeiture in Exhibit P5 on which the petitioners have relied does not qualify as a sentence of fine for an offence involving dishonesty or fraud within the confabulation of Section 137(d) of the 1999 constitution,” said Justice Haruna Tsammani, who read the judgement on Wednesday.
He added: “The petitioners have evidently failed to establish their allegation that the 2nd respondent is disqualified from contesting the presidential election under Section 137(1)(d) of the 1999 constitution because he was fined $460,000 by a district court in Illinois.”
According to the tribunal, civil forfeiture is not a criminal charge or a conviction. It insisted that there is no record of Tinubu being arrested or convicted of any crime.
Tsammani ruled that the petitioners failed to present convincing evidence that Tinubu was charged, entered a plea, sentenced, or penalized in any criminal matter in the United States.
Even yet, the court denied the acceptance of evidence presented by LP’s web engineer, Mpeh Ogar, concerning a technical malfunction seen on the INEC result viewing page because Ogar “was an interested party in the petition having vied for elective office on LP’s platform.”
