The presidential candidate of the Lbour Party, LP, in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi, has been advised not to further spend resources to appeal the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, PEPT, at the Supreme Court against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Obi’s legal team was blamed for not presenting adequate facts and evidences at the Tribunal which led to the party and the presidential candidate losing out at the Tribunal.
Speaking in Port Harcourt, Rivers state capital, the chairman of LP, Hon Dienye Pepple said Obi’s insistence to appeal the earlier judgment was a misplaced decision which will only amount to lose of time, energy and resources.
“Every party has the right to appeal. The truth is that and I must be realistic to you, I don’t see anything coming out of that case because base on the judgment that the Tribunal gave, if you take time to analyze it, you will see that our party did not present our case well.
“Yes, we have a lot of evidences but those evidences were not well registered at the tribunal. They just took the result sheets and dumped them somewhere there. The lawyers of Peter Obi and that of the labour Party did not do their jobs well. One thing about the court is that they don’t believe in social media noise or people’s opinion. There must be facts to prove your point.
“The legal team did not prove their case well. Going to the Supreme Court will be a job in futility. The party did not even pay its agents. Former LP national chairman, Julius Abule refused to release money to pay the agents. That was why the agents have refused to come out and testify. The legal team and Abule killed the chances of the party at the court”.
Pepple claimed that he had to personally pay the agents just to get the results sheets from them. “I had to personally paid the agents to release some result sheets to me which I took to Abuja. There is nothing to prove that our result was reduced. What figure did we score and what figure was it reduced to? What are the evidences that we won the election? Nobody wins election without releasing money to the agents and LP did not do so”.
The same way they handled the tribunal case is how they will handle the Supreme Court case. Nothing difference will happen. Is a white goose chase.
I believe that Obi won the election. But is a legal matter which has nothing to do with opinion. The law believes in evidence and facts.
Speaking on the forthcoming local government elections in March in Rivers state, Pepple said “we are thinking on how to win the forthcoming election in March, all things being equal. We are working towards clinching most of the seats as the third biggest party in Rivers state. We have one federal House of Reps member here in the state. We will have more councilors and chairmen in the council election”.
He called on the national leadership of the LP to begin preparations for the 2027 general elections where the party hopes to do better. “We have to go back and look at where we made mistakes so that in 2027 we can be well prepared. Obi’s coming into the Labour Party was a bit late. Now we have room to prepare very well”, he said.