The Enugu State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal on Friday upheld the election of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in the April 11, 2015 governorship election.
The tribunal struck out the petition filed by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the state, Okey Ezea, on the grounds that it was frivolous, lacked merit and was an abuse of the court process.
A cost of N150, 000 was equally awarded in favour of each of the respondents in the petition.
Delivering the judgement, which lasted over three hours, the chairman of the tribunal, Justice Kwajafa Hildad, held that several paragraphs of Ezea’s petition were earlier struck out for being imprecise and vague.
Hildad said the petition equally contained criminal allegations against people who were not made parties to the case.
He added that the petitioner’s allegations of over-voting and non-accreditation, through the manipulation of the card reader by the Independent National Electoral Commission and other respondents, were not sufficiently proved as it is only the voter’s register that could determine the number of people that voted in an election.
He maintained that the petitioner failed to provide the voter’s register to prove his case.
The tribunal also noted that the petitioner only provided six witnesses drawn from only six out of the 2,958 polling units in the state, a figure described as insufficient.
The tribunal held that the six witnesses admitted that the governorship election was free, fair and peaceful “with minor irregularities which were not sufficient enough to cancel the election”.
The tribunal added that the APC candidate failed to prove the allegation of falsification of result figures, maintaining that mere assertion that the figures were falsified was not enough evidence. It therefore dismissed the petition and upheld Ugwuanyi’s election as valid.
Reacting to the judgement, the state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party described it as “a reflection of the wishes of the majority of the people of Enugu State”.
The Publicity Secretary of the PDP in the state, Dr. Okey Eze, said the judgement had proved that the governor was freely elected by the people.
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