BY PETER OKUTU

ABAKALIKI-THE All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, gubernatorial candidate in last April’s general election in Ebonyi State, Senator Julius Ali Ucha, has approached the Supreme Court challenging declaration of Governor Martin Elechi  by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

In his notice of appeal, Ucha asked the Supreme Court to declare him  rightful winner of the election based on the minimal pleading since, according to him, the respondents did not give evidence that he scored the  highest number of valid votes at the Ebonyi State Election Petition Tribunal.

It should be recalled that the Court of Appeal, Enugu Division, had last month dismissed Ucha’s appeal for lack of merit, even as it affirmed the decision of the tribunal.

Justice Helen Moronkeji Ogunwumiju, while reading the lead judgment, observed as follows: “An appeal is by way of rehearing. The appellant is obliged to restate the crux of the case at the lower court  to enable the court review totality of the cogent evidence available before the lower court.

“How we can grant the reliefs sought by the notice of appeal when they were not properly addressed. There is no doubt in my mind that not only did the appellant not prove the substantial non compliance, the solitary and few examples of non compliance he elicited from the testimony of the respondents’ witnesses are not material enough to offset the result of the election.”

Justices Abubakar Gumel and Ignatius Igwe Agube, in concurring with the lead judgment, noted that “it is enough to allege non-compliance, corrupt practices and sundry criminal violations of the Electoral Act and the manual for Electoral Officers in a petition.”

But the Appellant’s counsels, led by Ricky Tarfa (SAN), in their notice of appeal to the Supreme Court, maintained that there could be no election without accreditation of voters, stressing that the  irregularities, including endorsement of polling unit and collation of results by one officer, invalidated such results.

Ucha’s counsels argue that when the matter was at the tribunal, despite the fact that the first respondent, (Governor Elechi) did not appear to give evidence, his star witness, Clement Nweke, absconded when he discovered that there was nothing to defend, stressing that “the Tribunal noted that the evidence of 74 witnesses were impostors whose testimonies could not be depended on by any sane court.”

Consequently, the appellants invited the apex court to enter judgment in their favour by subtracting the number of invalid votes from the total tallies of both candidates.

The first and third respondents, Governor Elechi and INEC, filed their addresses on Tuesday, while the second respondent, the Peoples democratic Party, PDP, filed its briefs on February 8, 2012.