Politics

BREAKING: Supreme Court affirms Nwifuru as Ebonyi governor

Published

4 months ago

January 12, 2024

The Supreme Court has affirmed the election victory of Governor Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi State.

The apex court in its ruling on Friday led by Justice Tijjani Abubakar, dismissed two separate appeals that sought to sack Nwifuru of the All Progressives Congress (APC), from office, saying the appeals were “patently unmeritorious.”

The appeals which challenged the victory of Nwifuru as the valid winner of the state governorship poll held on March 18, 2023, were lodged by Chief Ifeanyi Odii, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Prof. Benard Odoh of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, (APGA).

In its ruling, the Supreme Court held that it found no reason to set aside the concurrent verdicts of the State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal which had earlier upheld Nwifuru’s victory.

The Independent National Election Commission (INEC), declared Nwifuru the winner in the gubernatorial election after he scored a total of 199,131 votes to beat his closest rival, Dr. Odii of the PDP, who scored 80,191 votes.

But not satisfied with the result, both Odii and Odoh had first gone to the tribunal to challenge the outcome of the election on the grounds, among others, that Nwifuru had presented a forged certificate to INEC and therefore ineligibility to stand for the election.

However, the tribunal, on September 27, 2023, dismissed all the petitions as lacking in merit, holding that the petitioners failed to establish their allegations that the APC candidate had forged his certificates and did not secure the majority of lawful votes that were cast at the election.

The tribunal also noted that some of the grounds of the petitions were pre-election issues that were not only within the realm of domestic affairs of a political party.

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