PREMIUM TIMES reported how three other parties had also filed their separate petitions at the election petition court to challenge the victory of the president-elect - Bola Tinubu.
A faction of the Action Alliance (AA) has asked the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to nullify Bola Tinubu's victory as Nigeria's president-elect.
Mr Tinubu was the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 25 February presidential election.
He defeated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar, Labour Party's Peter Obi, and 15 others in the race, after scoring 8.8 million votes.
But the Action Alliance has urged the court to nullify the polls owing to alleged refusal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload the name of its actual presidential candidate - Solomon-David Okanigbuan - to its portal for the February poll.
The case is one in a series of petitions that various political parties have filed to challenge the outcome of the presidential election.
PREMIUM TIMES reported the petitions of three other political parties - the Peoples Democratic Party, the Labour Party, and the All Peoples Movement (APM) - filed at the election petition court in Abuja.
In its petition filed on 16 March, the AA and Mr Okanigbuan as co-petitioners, said despite subsisting court orders recognise Mr Okanigbuan as the authentic presidential standard-bearer, the electoral umpire instead uploaded the name of Hamza Al-Mustapha.
INEC had recognised Mr Al-Mustapha, a former chief security officer to late Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, AA's presidential candidate for the election.
Mr Al-Mustapha polled 14,542 votes in the election.
Leadership crisis
The National Chairman of Action Alliance, Adekunle Omo-Aje, had said in January that Mr Al-Mustapha was not the authentic presidential candidate of the party.
He spoke against the background of the leadership tussle rocking his party, which gave rise to the emergence of two presidential candidates.
It would be recalled that a national congress of the party organised by the Omo-Aje leadership last year and monitored by INEC, produced Mr Okanigbuan as the party's presidential candidate.
However, Mr Al-Mustapha won the presidential primary election conducted by the faction led by Kenneth Udeze, on 9 June 2022, in Abuja.
The electoral commission had recognised all the candidates presented to it by the Udeze-led faction of the party, despite court judgements declaring that he was no longer a member of the party. The courts had also ordered INEC to accept and publish the names of candidates sent to it by the Omo-Aje leadership of the AA.
Despite the orders of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal both in Abuja, Mr Udeze is still listed on INEC website as the national chairman of AA.
Decrying INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu's refusal to recognise Mr Okanigbuan, Mr Omo-Aje had said in January, "We fulfilled all INEC electoral guidelines and requirements according to the Nigerian Constitution with the commission, yet he (Mr Yakubu) is hell bent on excluding Action Alliance from the coming 2023 General Elections."
Grounds for petition
Laying the basis for the complaint, the AA said it presented Mr Okanigbuan to INEC as its candidate to contest the presidential election held on 25 February, but INEC "unlawfully excluded him from the election."
The party contended that the electoral commission's exclusion of its "authentic" candidate from the race renders the entire exercise "invalid for non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022."
"The 1st respondent (INEC) deliberately refused to obey the order of the court that it should upload the names as ordered by court," the petition stated.
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The party further argued that despite the fact that Mr Okanigbuan was validly chosen to represent in the presidential poll, INEC "unlawfully excluded him from the said election and rather imposed a certain Hamza Al-Mustapha" as its candidate "when the said Hamza Al-Mustapha is not a member of" the party.
Citing provisions of the Nigerian constitution, AA noted that only a political party and not INEC is "authorised to nominate, sponsor and canvass for votes for candidates at any election."
The first petitioner argued that it was "wrong" of INEC to have excluded Mr Okanigbuan from the presidential election, adding that the action amounted to a disenfranchisement of its "numerous supporters who could not vote because their preferred candidate was not on the ballot."
The petitioners' lawyer, Dauda Usman, urged the court to set aside Mr Tinubu's election and order INEC to conduct a fresh presidential poll.
