Nigeria’s Obi Vows to Overturn Tinubu Election Victory in Court

(Bloomberg) -- The Nigerian politician who ran an upstart presidential campaign from outside the two main parties said he will contest the election result in court after finishing in third place.

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“We won the election and I will prove it to Nigerians,” Peter Obi told reporters in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday. The Labour Party’s candidate reaffirmed remarks made the previous day by his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, who said they will submit a legal challenge to the Feb. 25 vote won by Bola Tinubu — whose campaign has dismissed claims that the outcome isn’t legitimate.

Lawyers for the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party are studying the election results and the party will act on their advice, leader Atiku Abubakar said at a separate briefing Thursday, adding that the “processes and outcome of the elections were grossly flawed and must be challenged by all of us.” The courts rebuffed his efforts to reverse the result of the last election in 2019 after he lost to President Muhammadu Buhari.

“Contesting the result is likely to be a fruitless move,” said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst for West Africa at risk consultancy firm Verisk Mapelcroft. “The opposition’s chance to overturn Tinubu’s victory is very slim considering the APC’s grip on the state institutions and the electoral laws that make it extremely difficult for legal challenges to succeed.”

Obi said his supporters asked him to legally contest Tinubu’s victory. “I am going to go where I am directed to go,” he said. The LP must file its petition within 21 days of the March 1 results announcement.

The ruling All Progressives Congress accused the opposition parties of trying to “delegitimize the mandate freely given” to Tinubu and said it is ready to meet its adversaries in court.

Tinubu received about 35% of the votes, the PDP’s Abubakar 28% and Obi about 24%, according to the electoral commission. The PDP and LP boycotted the collation process, alleging “monumental disparities” between the official results and the data available to their polling agents.

The presidential race “will go down as one of the most controversial elections ever conducted in Nigeria,” Obi said. “The good and hardworking people of Nigeria have again been robbed by our supposed leaders who they trusted,” he said.

If the courts function properly, they will take into account all the “failings of the electoral commission” that have been raised by opposition parties and observation missions, Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre in Abuja, said. However, “a lot of people believe the judiciary could be politically manipulated,” he said.

Tinubu is due to take over from Buhari at the end of May after a three-month transition.

(Updates with analysts comment in fourth, ninth paragraphs)

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