Will results trigger a floodgate of litigations?

As results from the just concluded presidential and National Assembly elections threw up shocks with unexpected victories and defeats, there are expectations that many of the losers will head to the courts.

So far in the presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC is recorded to have scored the highest votes, ahead of the remaining 72 other presidential aspirants including his main rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.

There are other political candidates that surprisingly lost the election, including Godswill Akpabio (Akwa Ibom, APC); Bukola Saraki (Kwara, PDP); while surprise winners include Oker Jev (Benue, PDP), and Orji Uzor Kalu (Abia, APC).

Following this outcome, the PDP has since rejected the results of the elections. And sources in the party told Daily Trust that it will challenge the election in court.

The National Legal Adviser of PDP, Emmanuel Enoidem, alleged that “It is obvious that the will of the Nigerian people is about to be compromised by a grand conspiracy between the APC/government and INEC and the security agencies.”

In the general election of 2015, a lot of National Assembly, governorship and state assembly election results were taken to the election petitions tribunals from where many of them reached the Supreme Court.

A total of 730 election petitions were brought to the Court of Appeal after the 2015 general elections. Of this, 39 were from governorship elections petitions, while it also received 79 senatorial petitions, 179 House of Representatives, and 380 State Houses of Assembly petitions.

But the then president and candidate of the PDP, Goodluck Jonathan, decided not to challenge the outcome of the presidential election. The decision helped calm tensions across the country.