PDP Loses As Supreme Court Affirms Governor Alia’s Election

The Supreme Court has affirmed the judgments of the election petitions tribunal and Court of Appeal, upholding the mandate of Governor Hyacinth Aliya as the duly elected governor of Benue State.

VerseNews reports that the appeal by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Titus Uba, was dismissed.

Uba and PDP had last month approached the apex court to challenge the declaration of Governor Alia of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of the March 18 governorship election in Benue State.

Besides claiming that the governor and his party did not win majority of lawful votes cast at the election, they submitted that Alia and the APC were not qualified to contest the election on account of alleged certificate forgery and providing of false information by the Deputy Governor, Sam Odeh, to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

However, when the matter came up on Monday for hearing, a five-member panel of the apex court led by Justice John Okoro, pointed out that the major ground of non-qualification upon which the appellants rest their appeal was a pre-election matter, which the apex court has held over time to be an incompetent case before them in a post election matter.

Justice Okoro harped that it would be needless to proceed with the matter knowing the outcome, adding that the court should not be overburdened with such issues considering the magnitude of cases on the docket of the apex court.

Responding, lead lawyer to the appellants, Chief Sebastine Hon, SAN, moved an oral application for the withdrawal of the appeal.

The application for withdrawal was not objected to by counsel representing, INEC, Alia, Odeh and APC, following which Justice Okoro, announced the dismissal of the case.

The Court of Appeal in Abuja, had in November last year dismissed the appeal filed by Uba and PDP) against the election of Reverend Father Hyacinth Alia as Governor of Benue State.

The three-member panel of the appellate court in a judgment held that the appeal lacked merit and subsequently dismissed it.

Justice Onyekachi Otisi, who delivered the lead judgment supports the earlier verdicts of the tribunal and the Court of Appeal, which validated the March 18 election where Aliya of the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged as the winner with 473,933 votes against Uba of the PDP with 223,914 votes.