Atiku’s Petition Against Buhari Was Futile – Sagay (SAN)

Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), Chairman of the Presidential
Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) in this interview
with TEMIDAYO AKINSUYI, speaks on the
ruling of the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal which
validated the election of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Excerpts:

You once predicted that Atiku should accept the outcome
of the 2019 presidential election and refrain from challenging the
outcome in court. Now that President Buhari’s victory has been
validated by the Tribunal, can you say you have been
vindicated?

I think any lawyer who knows anything about Election Law would
have realised that Atiku’s petition against President Buhari’s
victory was futile. They went on an excursion on qualification
which is really shocking because the provisions in the Constitution
did not require you to even have school certificate. It simply
requires you to have secondary education which is different from
having a school certificate.

Buhari not only has school certificate, he has gone for many
trainings and has many certificates which is by far higher than
school certificate, in fact, closer to a degree. He also has
Postgraduate Diploma from a course he took in America. So, the
whole idea of Atiku filing petition on his educational
qualification is ridiculous and they shouldn’t really have dwelt on
that.

This is a man who has contested presidential election three
times earlier. So, the whole petition was a ridiculous argument and
I’m shocked they pressed it so far and it appears they want to
continue to press it by going to the Supreme Court. In my view that
was foolish.

I don’t think they were really thinking. Also, they were talking
about server. Server is an electronic device and it is normally
used with computers and similar devices and you can send
information to it and it will be saved. The Electoral Act 2010 does
not permit electronic transmission of results.

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They tried to deceive President Buhari on so many occasions,
fraudulently deceiving him knowing the intention they had to sign a
new Bill which would have allowed electronic transmission but he
refused. I think he knew what they were planning all along. If he
had signed the Bill, they would have brought out this fake server.
But as it is, if INEC was to say it used a server for this election
and the results were transmitted electronically, it would have
nullified the whole exercise.

Maybe that was what they were looking for, for INEC to admit
using a server and we will have a nullity on our hands. In relying
on something that is illegal, looks to me like a sort of inevitable
failure or programmed failure.

The chairman of the tribunal in his ruling said the
petitioner failed to prove substantial non-compliance of the
electoral act in the 11 states complained to have been marred by
electoral malpractices. What is your take on
this?

For you to prove that the result of an election did not comply
substantially with the Electoral Act, especially by saying there
was fraud, wrong entry, that the results were not mathematically
correct and there was difference in the votes cast and what was
recorded, in the case of the presidential election, according to
the present law laid down by the Supreme Court in Wike and
Peterside, you need to bring all the results from virtually every
polling booth in the country.

We are talking of 120,000 polling booth and you need to get
somebody from each polling booth to give evidence. After that,
there are voting points which will bring it to about 140,000.

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So, it is an impossible task. Apart from the fact that it is not
true the election was rigged because Buhari won overwhelmingly
based on the results that were declared, everybody was present, the
results were tabulated, added up at various stages until it got to
the final stage in Abuja. Everybody followed the result up and
nobody complained. Even if it was not so as it was in the case of
Yar’Adua and it was not so the case of a state in this country
which I don’t want to mention because I have antagonized the people
involved enough, they were allowed to get away with it because
evidence according to the Supreme Court must be brought polling
booth by polling booth and polling point by polling point. In a
state we are talking about 3,000 witnesses from each of those units
and at the federal level, about 140,000. So, it an impossible task
and going to the Supreme Court in my view is not advisable as the
outcome will not be different from what happened at the Appeal
Court.

Now that the President Buhari’s victory has been
affirmed by the court, what advice do you have for
him?

I will advise President Buhari to carry on and improve upon what
he has been doing on the Next Level which has been successful.
There are so many laudable projects going on in the country. They
are now acquiring funds to carry out the railway line from Ibadan
to Kano, which will also go through Abuja. They are completing the
Mambilla Plateau electrical project which will light up most of the
North and maybe other parts of the country. They are completing the
Second Niger Bridge which all other Presidents abandoned. They are
doing so many things which I can’t mention because of time. I have
not even talked about social investment in which the vulnerable in
Nigeria are being uplifted. The Buhari government is doing a lot of
things that this country has never seen before and they are going
to continue doing it. We have to be grateful to God that we have a
government made up of people who want to genuinely serve and do not
want anything for themselves.

Culled from independent.ng

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