Legal veteran and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Robert Clark says the move by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to appeal the judgement of the Presidential Election Petitions Court on the 2023 presidential election may be futile.
On Wednesday, September 6, 2023, the court threw out Obi and Atiku’s petitions and affirmed the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu after a 12-hour marathon judgement.
Following the verdict, Atiku, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 general elections and Obi of the Labour Party vowed to approach the Supreme Court.
Reacting to this, Clark, while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics on Sunday, September 10, 2023, said nothing may come out of the appeal.
The 85-year-old legal luminary said his view on the matter is “enriched by past experience in the dispensation of justice at the bar.”
“I have every belief, and I seriously believe that the unanimous judgment of the Court of Appeal is unassailable, it is as fixed as you can fix anything and I can assure you that if there is an appeal, I doubt whether anything can come out of the appeal,” Clark said.
Clark agreed with the tribunal that the petitioners failed to prove their petitions beyond reasonable doubt.
Similarly, the leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele has advised Atiku and Obi not to waste their money by appealing the tribunal judgement at the Supreme Court.
In a statement by his media aide, Osho Oluwatosin, the cleric likened the move to appeal the verdict to throwing a billion into the fire, saying it won’t yield anything.
He said, “What Nigeria needs now is not the Supreme Court judgment; the opposition didn’t listen at the very initial stage. Politics is more than what to play, it’s a mixture of prayer, effort and struggle. Atiku and Obi were not ready for this election, God wanted to take power from the ruling party but the opposition didn’t take the right step.
“Going to the Supreme Court is like throwing a billion naira into the fire. I told them Tinubu was ready but they didn’t listen.’’
The cleric, therefore, advised Atiku and Obi to forget the appeal and wait for the next election because they “cannot win at the Supreme Court.”
