Some international human rights and rule of law groups have stated that the rigging of the 2023 Nigerian Presidential Polls is worse than the military coups experienced in the Republics of Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso.
The groups are the International College of Democracy and Human Rights, the Eastern Nigerian Democracy and Human Rights Coalition; the Coalition of Democracy and Human Rights Organisations and the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety).
They warned that the Justices of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) must be allowed by the Bola Tinubu presidency including the country’s spy police chiefs and regular police authorities to “freely and morally write and deliver their verdict popularly and independently and refrain from moves strongly suggestive of forcing a scripted verdict on them prepared by the presidential “evil geniuses” to be delivered by PEPT to Nigerians and the world.”
This was contained in a statement jointly signed by the international groups and sent to SaharaReporters on Saturday.
The groups explained that PEPT Justices must be reminded that the sacred collective assignment given to them by Nigerians is to factually determine the true winner and losers of the 2023 Presidential Election using the laid down rules and procedures including the collected and tabulated results in the FormEC8As and recognised electronic devices.
The statement partly read; “We, the representatives of the Coalitions above mentioned are in this Joint-Statement calling on the Five-Man Panel (Justices of the Court of Appeal) of the 2023 Presidential Election Petitions’ Tribunal to morally and judicially ensure that the verdict of the PEPT is tailored in ‘A Decided Case As It Ought To Be’ devoid of ‘technicalities and political orbiters’ or “ethno-religious biases and divisions”.
dicidendi’ or facts derived from weak laws or legal loopholes’.
“It must also be pointed out that majority of Nigerian Judges and ‘pro establishment lawyers’ have earned ‘notorious and crooked expertise’ in ‘legal technicalities (loopholes) and political orbiters’.
“These ‘crooked feats’ so achieved especially since 2015 have left Nigeria with the internationally rated or measured status of second to none in the world; to the extent that in international jurisprudential discourse, the growth of law in Nigeria amounts to under-growth of law in democracy compliant countries with international jurisprudential best practices in that killer-laws such as legal technicalities or loopholes thrive and shape the laws of countries with endemic and pandemic corruption under which Nigeria is unarguably and inescapably classified,” the statement added.
Source: SaharaReporters