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CROSS RIVER: Appeal court orders fresh election in Abi LG
Davies Etta of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has lost his appeal seeking to overturn the judgement by the Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Calabar which called for fresh elections in about 15 polling units in Abi Local Government Area of Cross River.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar threw out his appeal on Wednesday for lack of merit.
Delivering the judgement, the presiding Judge, Justice T. Abubakar, upheld the decision of the lower tribunal and ordered INEC to within 90 days conduct fresh elections in 15 polling units in the local government area.
Davies Etta had been declared winner of the March 2019 state house of assembly elections for Abi LGA having polled a total of 12,521 votes to beat his closest contender Iwara Inah of the APC who had 7,603 votes.
READ ALSO: Nwabueze tried to destroy Supreme Court’s reputation on altar of politics – Keyamo
Inah took the matter to the tribunal and the tribunal had ordered INEC to conduct a fresh election in 15 polling units in Abi. This was because of perceived irregularities in those polling units which led to the cancellation of results gotten from those units.
The tribunal said the total number of registered voters in those polling units was about 10,000 and enough to swing the outcome of the elections to either side, therefore there was need to conduct fresh elections.
Ettta however, appealed to the tribunal arguing that INEC did not use voters register to determine the total number of registered voters in those units.
He further argued that following INECs register the numbers of voters in those units are not up to the acclaimed figure. And as such there’s no need for a fresh election since he has well over 5000 votes ahead of his contender.
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