President Bola Tinubu’s lie under oath that he did not obtain foreign citizenship cannot be used to nullify his election because his foreign passport was not adequately submitted in court, a panel of appellate judges ruled on Wednesday.
The judges said Mr Tinubu’s Guinean passport was not properly certified as evidence before the court and was therefore expunged.
Mr Tinubu had specifically stated in his nomination filed under oath before the Independent National Electoral Commission that he had never obtained a foreign citizenship.
But his Guinean passport subsequently surfaced. Mr Tinubu admitted in court that the foreign citizenship document belonged to him, but said it should not matter because Guinea is an Ecowas-member nation like Nigeria.
While the judges did not agree with Mr Tinubu’s argument, they nonetheless expunged the passport from evidence compilation because it was not duly certified.
The decision appeared to contradict the earlier statement of the court that it was not going to decide the election challenge on technical grounds.
