Enugu tribunal upholds Ugwuanyi’s election

The Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Enugu yesterday affirmed the election of Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi as the gov­ernor of Enugu State.

The candidate of the All Progres­sives Congress (APC), Chief Okey Ezea in the April 11, 2015 guberna­torial election in the state had filed a petition at the tribunal challenging Ug­wuanyi’s election.

But the tribunal yesterday struck out his petition, saying that it was frivolous, against court processes, and, therefore, lacked merit.

As soon as the judgment was deliv­ered, thousands of the governor’s sup­porters who had thronged the Enugu State High Court premises venue of the tribunal sitting went into wild jubila­tion while Ugwuanyi who arrived from Abuja hit the streets of the metropolis with the local government chairmen to celebrate and thank the people for the victory.

Delivering the judgment, which last­ed over three hours, the Chairman of the tribunal, Justice Kwajafa Hildad, disclosed that the tribunal had earlier in the course of hearing the case struck out several paragraphs of Ezea’s peti­tion for being imprecise, vague, and re­lating to party nomination which was a pre-election matter with some of them containing criminal allegations against people who were not made parties to the petition.

Justice Hildad noted that the peti­tioner’s allegation on over-voting and non-accreditation through the manipu­lation of the Card Readers Machine by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other respon­dents were not sufficiently proved, pointing out that it was only the vot­ers’ register that could determine the number of voters that participated in an election, saying that Ezea failed to provide the voters’ register to prove his case.

The chairman also disclosed that the petitioner brought only six witnesses from six polling units out of the 2,958 polling units in the state, saying that was not sufficient evidence that could support his case, and thus rendered it incompetent.

Not only that, the six witnesses the petitioner brought, he said, admitted that the governorship election was free, fair and peaceful with minor ir­regularities, which were not sufficient enough to cancel an election.

He also said that the petitioners failed to prove their allegation of falsi­fication of result figures, stressing that mere assertion that the figures were falsified was not enough evidence for their prayers to be granted.

The tribunal, therefore, dismissed Ezea’s petition and upheld Gover­nor Ugwuanyi’s election as valid and awarded a cost of N150,000 to each of the respondents in the petition.

Reacting to the judgment, the Peo­ples Democratic Party (PDP), Enugu State chapter, through its Publicity Secretary, Dr Okey Eze, said that it was the reflection of the wishes of the people of state.

Dr. Eze, who addressed newsmen at the court premises after the ruling, said that the judgment has proved to the world that Enugu is a PDP state and the governor was indeed elected by the people.

He said that his party was not ex­pecting that the APC governorship candidate would go for appeal as the tribunal has proved that his case has no locus standi.

He said that with the case ending, the distractions are over and the governor and the PDP would now concentrate more on the governance of the state for the people to enjoy the dividends of democracy.