EXPLAINER: What You Need To Know About Consolidation Of Obi, Atiku And APM’s Petitions Against Tinubu

EXPLAINER: What You Need To Know About Consolidation Of Obi, Atiku And APM’s Petitions Against Tinubu

On Tuesday, May 23, 2023, Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja ordered the merger of the cases filed by Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) to challenge Bola Tinubu’s victory as Nigeria’s president-elect.

In a ruling detailing a report of its pre-hearing session on Mr Obi’s petition, the court ordered a consolidation of the three pending petitions (Obi, Atiku and APM).

The panel’s chair, Mr Tsammani, citing Paragraph 50 of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act 2022, said the interest of justice would be served by a merger of the petitions.

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“The justice of these petitions demands that this petition be consolidated,” Mr Tsammani said.

Legal perspective

Consolidation in this stance means to combine (two or more lawsuits or matters that involve a common question of law or fact) into one compare class action

NOTE: Consolidation of matters in the federal court is governed by Rule 42 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

Consolidated cases may become one single action with a single judgment, or may retain their individual identities although tried together. The court may also try one representative case and render a judgment binding on the other cases (which is based on the discretion of the court to decide). Hence, it is constitutional and not a policy decision as in the case of the live broadcast of proceedings put forward by Atiku and Obi’s legal team.

What this implies

With the consolidation of the three pending petitions, the court is bound to conclude proceedings and give judgment on all pending suits by 16 September as against waiting till the expiration of the 180 days for hearing. Hence, the petitioners must assemble all their witnesses to testify before the court before the aforementioned date.

Credit: Tribune

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