The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, reserved its judgement on appeals that seek to nullify the election of Governor Alex Otti of Abia State.

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri, Abuja

The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, reserved its judgement on appeals that seek to nullify the election of Governor Alex Otti of Abia State.

The appeals were lodged against Otti, who won his election on the platform of the Labour Party, LP, by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Okey Ahiwe, and his counterpart in the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Ikechi Emenike.

A five-member panel of the apex court led by Justice Inyang Okoro okayed judgement on both appeals after all the parties adopted their briefs of argument.

It will be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared that Otti polled 175,466 votes to defeat his closest rival, Ahiwe of the PDP, who scored 88,529 votes in the gubernatorial poll that was held on March 18, 2023.

Dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, both Ahiwe and Emenike of the APC, who came in third, separately challenged it.

However, in a judgement delivered on October 6, 2023, the Abia State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal dismissed the petitions and upheld Otti’s election victory.

The verdict of the tribunal was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in Lagos, which also dismissed appeals that were entered against Otti by both the PDP and APC candidates.

When the matter came up before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the PDP alleged that over 84,000 votes that was garnered by its candidate were wrongfully excluded during the result collation process.

Though the PDP’s legal team was led by the immediate past Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN, its appeal was presented before the apex court by a member of the team, Mr. Uche Ihediuwa, SAN.

The PDP told the court that its agent was chased away from the Abia state governorship election collation center, saying it was further denied a copy of the election result as required by law.

It told the court that it had to approach the APC to obtain the election result sheets, which, upon thorough inspection, was found to contain sundry malpractices.

However, while urging the apex court to dismiss the appeals, Otti, through his lawyer, Mr. Abiodun Owonikoko, SAN, maintained that he validly won the election and was returned by INEC in total compliance with the law. 

Denying the allegation that he emerged victorious through electoral malpractice, Otti drew attention of the court to the fact that even if the 84, 000 votes were to be added to the PDP candidate, the LP would still have won the election.

Besides, he noted that a purported result sheet that the PDP produced before the tribunal was rejected because it could not be read by the witness of the party.

On his part, the APC candidate, Emenike, urged the apex court to set aside the concurrent judgements of both the tribunal and the appellate court, which upheld Otti’s election.

He, among other things, contended that Otti was not a member of the LP at the time the governorship poll was held and was therefore not validly nominated as a candidate for the election.

After the apex court had listened to all the parties, it reserved its judgement until a date to be communicated to them.

Vanguard News