The Presidential Election Petitions Court has today struck out a petition of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) challenging the qualification of President Bola Tinubu and Kashim Shettima.
The Tribunal declared that it lacks the powers to hear the petition challenging the qualification of Tinubu and Shettima and their election as president and vice president respectively.
Reading the lead judgment on Wednesday, Justice Haruna Tsammani held that the issues brought before the tribunal are pre-election matters, which ought to have been at a high court.
He added that the timeframe of 180 days within which to determine the issue had elapsed.
“In Alhassan and others versus Ishaku and others, it was held that an election tribunal has no jurisdiction on the primary of a political party,” he said.
Also, it stated that the nomination by substitution, in the case of Kabir Masari and Shettima, is a pre-election matter and that it can only be challenged by an aspirant in the party primary.
The Court emphasised that no political party has the right to challenge the mode of nomination of a candidate in another party, except in line with the provisions of Sections 131 and 137 of the Constitution.
The Court therefore cited the decision of the Supreme Court on 26th of May which had dismissed the case of double nomination against INEC, Kashim Shettima and others.
