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THE IMPUNITY JUDGMENT DELIVERED BY JUSTICE OKORO SUPPORTING BOLA TINUBU AGAINST PETER OBI DURING THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

March 22, 2026 • Dons Eze • 2 min read

THE IMPUNITY JUDGMENT DELIVERED BY JUSTICE OKORO SUPPORTING BOLA TINUBU AGAINST PETER OBI DURING THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

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  1. Dismissal of Appeals: Justice Okoro dismissed the appeals filed by HE Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), stating that they lacked merit. He affirmed the earlier judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) delivered on September 6, 2023, which upheld Tinubu’s election.
  2. On IReV and Election Result Transmission: The non-availability of election results on the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV) is not sufficient grounds to annul the election. Justice Okoro emphasized that the IReV is not a collation system and that its failure does not invalidate the election process.

3.25% Vote Requirement in the FCT: Addressing the contention regarding the necessity of securing at least 25% of votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Justice Okoro stated that the FCT does not hold a special status in this context and that the constitutional requirement applies uniformly across all states and the FCT.

  1. In the case of Bola Tinubu drug-related issues, Justice Okoro held that the court lacked the jurisdiction to grant the motion and admit the fresh documents because the 180 days provided in Section 285(6) of the Constitution for the hearing of election petitions lapsed on September 17.
  2. Justice Okoro ruled that both parties in this appeal, one thing is clear, and that is the appellants abandoned the duty imposed on them to lead credible evidence to prove non-compliance but relied solely on the failure of the first respondent (INEC) to transmit results in real time to the IREV portal.”
  3. Justice Okoro ruled that IREV is not a collation system, although it is part of the election process.

He added, “Where the IREV portal fails, it does not stop the collation of the results, which, up to the last election, was manually done.”7. Justice Okoro held that “the non-transmission of the election results on the IREV portal for whatever reason cannot be a ground upon which an election could be nullified, particularly as it is not the case of the appellants that the hard copies of the result sheets did exist at any level of collation.”

  1. Justice Okoro held that the appellants failed to prove their allegation of non-compliance on the side of INEC as required by leading credible evidence.
  2. Justice Okoro held that the PEPC was right to have held that scoring 25 percent of votes in the FCT was not a precondition for being declared a winner of the presidential election.
  3. Justice Okoro held that since there is no other set of scores provided by the appellants to show that they actually won the election, the figures provided by INEC are correct.
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Dons Eze

DONS EZE, PhD, Political Philosopher and Journalist of over four decades standing, worked in several newspaper houses across the country, and rose to the positions of Editor and General Manager. A UNESCO Fellow in Journalism, Dr. Dons Eze, a prolific writer and author of many books, attended several courses on Journalism and Communication in both Nigeria and overseas, including a Postgraduate Course on Journalism at Warsaw, Poland; Strategic Communication and Practical Communication Approach at RIPA International, London, the United Kingdom, among others.

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