Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, has said unless the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is unbundled to be more effective and non-partisan, presidential tribunals may never be able to unseat a president.

The senior lawyer disclosed this in a statement while reacting to the Judgement of the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja which dismissed the petitions challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.

The petitioners whose cases were dismissed on Wednesday are Peter Obi of the Labour Party, the People’s Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar and the Allied Peoples Movement.

The five-man panel of the PEPC chaired by Justice Haruna Tsammani held that the petitioners failed to provide credible evidence to overturn the election results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

The PEPC equally over-ruled the petitioners for failing to specify the specific polling unit results they are disputing and the actual scores they claimed to have gotten.

Reacting to the development, Adegboruwa stated that the verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court was not totally unexpected.

According to the senior lawyer, INEC, which is in custody of electoral documents and equipment, can frustrate a petition when it turns partisan.

“The principles of presumption of regularity of elections and that of substantial conformity make it extremely difficult to prosecute elections successfully.