Distinguished James Currey Fellow and investigative journalist David Hundeyin has alleged that Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress plan to compromise the judiciary to influence the decision of the members of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in the ongoing litigation instituted by the opposition candidates.
The editor-in-chief of the West Africa Weekly, who spoke with Rudolf Okonkwo during an interview on 90Minutes Africa, said that the ruling party did not make any effort to present a serious defense against the petition filed by the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, challenging the eligibility of Tinubu to contest the 2023 election.
“They made very little attempt to present a case because their entire strategy seems to be built on compromising the judiciary,” Hundeyin alleged.
Hundeyin, the recipient of the 2020 People Journalism Prize for Africa, said the ruling party’s strategy is to either use money to bribe the judges or outrightly intimidate them.
The candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party, are challenging the declaration of the ruling party candidate as the winner of the February 25 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). All the parties have since made their final submissions in the case, and the Tribunal has reserved judgment for a yet-to-be-determined date.
According to Mr. Hundeyin, Peter Obi is on course in his legal campaign to retrieve his stolen mandate. He, however, noted that the tendency of the country’s judiciary to rely on flimsy technicalities may make it difficult to predict an outcome.
“But Nigeria being as it is, it means anything can happen. The judges may agree with the submissions of Peter Obi and the Labour Party but still give judgment against them based on technicalities. We have seen all sought happen in Nigeria,” the author of “The Jungle: A Personal Journey with the Enfant Terrible of Nigerian Journalism,” said.