By joshua 
Femi Falana, Nigeria’s leading human rights lawyer and senior advocate, said he was in no way surprised by the Supreme Court’s ruling, which paved the way for the president-elect’s swearing-in Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, on Monday, May 29,
Nigeria Post reports. However, in a statement made by Falana on Saturday which says, all Nigerians know and are aware that the mandate does not belong to Tinubu, I will never be surprised if a court declares him victorious.
Falana explained this in an exclusive interview with our correspondent on Saturday. Recall that the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision by a five-member panel, dismissed as unfounded an appeal by the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to challenge Tinubu’s eligibility to run in the February 25 presidential election. It found that the appeal noted: SC/CV/501/2023, had been lodged in bad faith, and stressed that the PDP, whose candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar came second in the presidential campaign, was deprived of legal standing ( legal right), to challenge a nomination by another political party.
The PDP, in its appeal, had asked the court to annul Tinubu’s candidacy, claiming that vice-president-elect Senator Kashim Shettima had voted for more than one ahead of the 2023 general election.
The court was told that Shettima had been nominated twice, both for the Borno central senator seat and for the position of vice president, but when speaking about the development, Falana noted that he was not surprised, since he knows the federal and appellate courts have dismissed the lawsuit, and the legal luminary said the Supreme Court merely upheld the simultaneous judgment of the two courts. Falana said, Under the current electoral regime, everyone who has been cleared by INEC and received their certificate of return must be sworn in on May 29. That is the law.