Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate, defeated Peter Obi in the presidential election by a margin of 2,693,193 votes, according to Senior Advocate of Nigeria Festus Keyamo.
Festus Keyamo argued that if a presidential candidate claims electoral fraud in just one state, the election’s final outcome won’t necessarily be thrown out. According to Keyamo, the court can never overturn a decision if the claimed malpractice didn’t significantly affect it.
He said, in his own words:
So that no one misleads the uninitiated, let me explain how electoral jurisprudence operates: “If you allege electoral malpractice in just ONE STATE and you air 100 TV documentaries about it, it cannot and will not change the outcome of the election because the margin between the two candidates will not be eliminated when you subtract or add the result of that ONE STATE to the overall tally.
While I am not commenting on any specific petition that is currently before the court, I merely want to say that the proclaimed election result cannot be dismissed in its entirety due to any alleged irregularities if those irregularities do not SUBSTANTIALLY influence the stated result.
Peter Obi claimed to have won in Lagos by a significant margin and also claimed to have done so in Rivers State. Do you concur with Festus Keyamo that electoral fraud in one state cannot invalidate an election’s overall outcome? Please comment on this.
