Three people filed a lawsuit in Abuja's Federal High Court to stop the inauguration of President-elect Bola Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima, due to age and citizenship misrepresentations in a document Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The court dismissed the lawsuit.
In a decision on Friday, Justice James Omotosho stated that the lawsuit filed by the three individuals—Praise Ilemona Isaiah, Pastor Paul Isaac Audu, and Anongu Moses—who claimed to be Concerned Citizens.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit with the filing number FHC/ABJ/C5/657/2023 claimed that Tinubu, who was proclaimed the victor of the presidential election held on February 25, had lied under oath in the Form EC9 he gave to INEC to support his eligibility to run for office.
They also testified before the court that Tinubu lied when he said he had no other citizenship despite having a passport from Guinea.
The trio further asserted that Tinubu's actions were a flagrant breach of Sections 117 and 156 of the Penal Code Act because, despite the President-elect's assertion that he was born in 1957, it was actually established that he was actually born in 1952.
They requested a court order prohibiting Tinubu from running for any elective office for the subsequent ten years in an effort to usurp him.
The plaintiffs lacked locus standi, according to Justice Omotosho, who also held that the court lacked authority to hear the case because it concerned a presidential election.
He insisted that only a candidate could contest the eligibility or nomination of a candidate in an election under section 285 (14) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
According to him, only the Court of Appeal has the authority to hear disputes relating to the presidential election because the election has already been held.
Justice Omotosho ruled that the lawsuit was brought in bad faith with the intention of making the judiciary look foolish, accusing the plaintiffs of wasting the court's time by bringing it and calling it an abuse of the legal system.
Additionally, he claimed that the lawsuit, which tried to halt the inauguration that is scheduled for a few days from now, might undermine democracy in the country.
A total of N10 million in Tinubu's favor, N5 million in the APC's favor, and a further N1 million to be personally paid by the plaintiffs' attorneys were then ordered as costs to each of the respondents by Omotosho.
He also threatened to report the attorneys who assisted the plaintiffs in filing their lawsuit to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee for taking a course of conduct that was "capable of dragging the judiciary to the mud."