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THE Court of Appeal sitting in Benin City, Edo State capital will tomorrow deliver a judgment on the January governorship rerun election it ordered late last year, which returned incumbent Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as the winner of the election, which is being contested by Great Ogboru of the Democratic Peoples' Party (DPP).
The governorship election tribunal had in July declared Uduaghan the winner of the rerun election after Ogboru contested the validity of the election in eight local councils.
He proceeded to the Court of Appeal in Benin City to contest the verdict of the lower tribunal.
The same court will tomorrow also deliver a ruling on the appeal brought before it by Uduaghan challenging the lower tribunal's refusal to respect a Federal High Court in Asaba ruling that Ogboru was not qualified to contest the January rerun election. The judgment was given few days to the July ruling by the tribunal.
Meanwhile, the challenge by Ogboru on the April 2011 governorship election in the state is still pending before the governorship election petition tribunal.
After listening to the adoption of the written addresses of all parties in the two cases, Justice I. Agbo who presided over the sitting alongside four other justices of the Court of Appeal reserved ruling till tomorrow.
Summing up his submission in the main appeal, counsel to Ogboru, Mogbeyi Sagay (SAN), who led eight other lawyers, referred the court to pages 1048 to 1049, Vol 4 of the Tribunal Records where he said the PDP, INEC and other Uduaghan's witnesses spent over three hours to produce evidence that election took place in the eight local governments they were contesting. He added that the documents were accepted by the lower tribunal with specific allocation of the documents to units, wards and local governments.
"INEC could not also prove evidence of accreditation before the election even though they presented exhibit KKK which he said only showed that voters had their thumbs rubbed with ink instead of their left index fingers after accreditation," he said.
But in his submission, Wole Olanipekun (SAN) who led five others for Uduaghan argued that besides that he actually won the election, the issues canvassed by Ogboru had been overtaken by events since another election had been conducted and Uduaghan was already running his second tenure as governor of Delta State. "The lower tribunal was right and is still right in holding that the petitioner did not prove any case of non-compliance with the Electoral Act." He called for the dismissal of the appeal.
The Guardian