The Supreme Court has given its assent to President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President-elect Kashim Shettima’s inauguration.
The Peoples Democratic Party PDP’s lawsuit seeking exclusion from the 2023 presidential election was denied by the Court on Friday.
The Supreme Court ruled that the PDP’s complaint seeking disqualification of Tinubu and Shettima lacked merit and dismissed it.
Justice Adamu Jauro, who delivered the lead judgment, imposed a N2 million fine on the PDP for interfering with the internal affairs of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the conduct of its primary elections and nomination of candidates.
Justice Jauro concurred with Tinubu’s lawyer, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, that the PDP was a busy body and interfering party.
It was an intruder in the ways and manners in which it interjected itself illegally into the business of the APC.
The Supreme Court ruled that, aside from the fact that the PDP lacked the necessary jurisdiction to file the petition, the party also failed to produce any evidence that Shettima engaged in double nomination.
The PDP’s argument about the purported double nomination of the Vice President-elect was termed as “most unfortunate” and “clearly intended to mislead the Court and the country.”
The Supreme Court also agreed with Fagbemi that, regardless of how the APC conducted its primary election and nominated its candidates, the PDP must remain a spectator.
“It is abundantly clear that the Appellant (PDP) in the totality of its position in the instant case, is peeping and poke nosing into the affairs of another party as a busy body and meddlesome interloper,”
He stated.
The Court determined that the PDP’s action was hurtful because it used social media to construct a trap for the Supreme Court to blackmail it.
