Ex-presidential candidate asks appeal court to stop Tinubu’s inauguration

Ambrose Owuru, presidential candidate of the Hope Democratic Party (HDP) in the 2019 elections, has filed a suit seeking to stop the inauguration of Bola Tinubu as president.

Owuru, who filed the suit on Tuesday at the court of appeal in Abuja, had challenged the outcome of the 2019 elections.

He asked the court to declare the president’s seat vacant and swear him in as the authentic winner.

However, in January, a federal high court in Abuja dismissed the suit, describing it as “baseless, frivolous, irritating, and vexatious in its entirety”.

In a suit marked CA/CV/259/2023, Owuru urged the appeal court to prohibit President Muhammadu Buhari, Abubakar Malami, the attorney-general of the federation and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), from going ahead with Tinubu’s inauguration.

He argued that he was the winner of the 2019 presidential election and had not spent his tenure.

Owuru maintained that Buhari has been usurping his tenure of office since 2019 because the supreme court has not determined his petition challenging the election’s outcome.

He applied for “an order of prohibitory injunction compelling Buhari, AGF, and INEC, their servants, agents, and privies to preserve and give due cognizance and abstain from any further undertaking or engaging in any act of usurpation of adjudged acquired constitutional rights and mandate as the winner of the 2019 presidential election”.

He also applied for another order directing and placing on notice that any form of handover inauguration, organised and superintended by Buhari on May 29 outside the adjudged winner of the 2019 presidential election, subject of the pending appeal, remains and is viewed as an “interim place holder”.

An eight-paragraph affidavit in support of the suit is also asking the appellate court to give it an expeditious hearing before the inauguration of Tinubu.

On May 29, Tinubu will be sworn in as Nigeria’s president to succeed Buhari who will be completing his two-term of eight years.