BEVERLY HILLS, December 24, (THEWILL) – The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has dismissed the appeals of the governorship candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Chief Great Ogboru, and that of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Olorogun O’ tega Emerhor, in the April 11, 2015 governorship election in Delta State challenging the ruling of the state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which validated Governor Ifeanyi Okowa’s election.
In separate judgments by the five-man panel presided over by Justice Uwani Abba-Aji on Thursday, the Court of Appeal held that the appeals brought by the two candidates lacked merit and that the tribunal was right to have dismissed the separate petitions filed by Emerhor and Ogboru.
Justice Abba-Aji, while reading the lead judgment, pointed out that Ogboru merely relied on records of the card reader accreditation without demonstrating the documents by credible evidence.
Abba-Aji held that the appellant needed to have proved that the card reader machines functioned optimally in all the polling units of the state before he could solely rely on the accreditation by the card reader, adding that Ogboru never challenged the evidence of the respondents and even his own witnesses that the card readers had challenges in many part of the states and that apart from the use of card reader, there was also manual accreditation.
She held that the appellant needed to have proved that the card reader machines functioned optimally in all the polling units of the state before he could solely rely on the accreditation by the card reader.
In the judgment on Emerhor’s appeal, the Court of Appeal ruled that the most authentic way of proving over-voting is by relying on the voter register which the appellant failed to tender or rely on. The APC candidate’s appeal is similar to that of Ogboru.
Political watchers are of the view that both candidates and their parties are likely to test Thursday’s ruling at the Supreme Court.
