The Presidential Candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar,  has insisted that the Supreme Court has the authority to accept new evidence of alleged forgery by President Bola Tinubu in his appeal against the February 25 election. 

Atiku wants to present fresh documents from the Chicago State University in USA, which he claims show that Tinubu submitted a fake diploma to INEC when he registered as a presidential candidate. 

The Supreme Court will hear the appeals by Atiku and two other parties on Monday and decide whether to admit the new 32-page documents or not.

Tinubu’s lawyers have argued that the new evidence is invalid as it was submitted after the 180-day deadline set by the Electoral Act 2022 for the petition against the presidential election.

But Atiku’s lawyer, Chris Uche, said that the Supreme Court has the power and jurisdiction to receive and rule on the new evidence at any appeal stage.

He said the constitution does not limit the time for hearing and determining a presidential election petition to 180 days, as it only applies to lower tribunals and not to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court.

“There is no such constitutional limit of 180 days on the lower court to hear and determine a presidential election petition, such that can rob this Honourable Court to exercise its power in any manner whatsoever”.

“The parties are agreed that the Constitution is the fons et origo and the grundnorm, and supersedes any other legislation,” he said 

He quoted Section 233 of the constitution which gives the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine appeals from the Court of Appeal on any question of whether any person has been validly elected as President or Vice President.

“On the other hand, when it came to the next subsection, namely Section 285(7), they intentionally included and mentioned Court of Appeal. The trite maxim, my Lords, is “expressio unius est exclusio alterius”, meaning that the express mention of one thing in a statutory provision automatically excludes any other which otherwise would have been included by implication.

“Furthermore, when granting jurisdiction to the Court of Appeal to entertain presidential election petitions, the Constitution did not pretend that it was conferring the jurisdiction on a “tribunal”; it clearly gave the jurisdiction to the Court of Appeal. Thus, section 239(1) of the Constitution specifically provides thus:-

“Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the Court of Appeal shall, to the exclusion of any other court of law in Nigeria, have original jurisdiction to hear and determine any question as to whether – (a) any person has been validity elected to the office of President or Vice President under this Constitution,” he furthered.