The Court of Appeal in Abuja is set to rule today (Thursday) on appeals challenging the outcome of last year’s Edo State governorship election, which was won by Governor Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC)
A three-member bench of the Court of Appeal will deliver judgements on three appeals and one counter-appeal, which will ultimately determine whether to uphold or overturn the 2 April verdict of the lower governorship election tribunal that affirmed Mr Okpebholo’s victory.
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The appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the 21 September 2024 election, Asue Ighodalo, has drawn the most attention.
Mr Ighodalo and the PDP filed the appeal against the tribunal’s judgement, which dismissed their petition against the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
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INEC declared Mr Okpebholo the winner of the election with 291,667 votes, while Mr Ighodalo came in second with 247,655 votes. Several other candidates participated in the election but secured only a small fraction of the total votes.
However, Mr Ighodalo headed to the Edo State Governorship Election Tribunal which sat in Abuja to challenge the results.
He alleged widespread irregularities, overvoting, malpractices and non-compliance with the Electoral Act during the election.
The tribunal, in its judgement in April, dismissed his claims as unproven.
However, convinced of the merit of his case, Mr Ighodalo immediately appealed against the tribunal’s verdict.
Mr Okpebolo, although the ultimate winner of the case, was also dissatisfied with some aspects of the tribunal’s judgement. He, therefore, filed a cross-appeal to challenge aspects of the lower tribunal’s verdict that he considered unfavourable.
The Court of Appeal’s decision is not final in election disputes, as dissatisfied parties can further challenge the decision at the Supreme Court, which has the final say on the matter.
Ighodalo’s case
At the hearing of the appeals on 1 May, the appellants’ Mr Ighodalo’s legal team, urged the Court of Appeal in Abuja to overturn the tribunal’s judgement.
Their lawyer, Robert Emukpoeruo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), faulted the tribunal’s evaluation of the evidence.
Mr Emukpoeruo said contrary to the tribunal’s decision, his clients did not just dump documents on it but demonstrated how the evidence proved the case.
Among other submissions, the lawyer said the appellants challenged the allegedly flawed results collation process at the ward level during the election.
The appellants’ case also rested heavily on the contention about the proprietary or otherwise of serial numbers missing from Forms EC25B used for the poll.
The Forms EC25B are a series of documents by which presiding officers at polling units acknowledge receiving all necessary election materials (such as ballot papers, result sheets, and stamps) from the Electoral Officer or Supervisory Presiding Officer.
Mr Emukpoeruo said the absence of serial numbers on Forms EC25B was in violation of Section 73(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022.
“The tribunal insisted we needed polling agents or witnesses to testify about how the forms were filled or left unfilled. But that was not our case.
“Our case was simply that the Form EC25B did not contain the required serial numbers,” the lawyer argued.
The appellants argued that absence of serial numbers from the forms marred the election.
Respondents pushed back
But Mr Okpebholo’s lawyers urged the court to affirm the tribunal judgment and dismiss all the appeals since they have failed to prove their allegations of over-voting, irregularities etc.
The governor’s lawyer, Oyinyechi Ikpeazu, also a SAN, maintained that the serial numbers were missing from the Forms EC25B, because the documents did not provide a space for it, but rather records the quantities of electoral materials received and returned.
Mr Ikpeazu noted that the serial numbers in question were clearly indicated on Form EC40A, which the appellants submitted at the tribunal.
The lawyer pointed out that although the petition mentioned Form EC25D but did not present it during the tribunal’s trial. Form EC25D is used for documenting the distribution of sensitive electoral materials—such as ballot papers, result sheets, and stamps—to electoral officials at the Local Government Area (LGA) level.
Mr Ikpeazu also contended that ward collation officers were not bound by data uploaded to the IREV portal, especially in cases of over-voting.
APC’s lawyer, Emmanuel Ukala, and INEC’s, Kanu Agabi – both SANs – also toed similar lines of argument as Mr Ikpeazu, and urged the Court of Appeal to dismiss the appellants’ case.
Mr Ukala maintained that, despite the introduction of Sections 73(2) and 137 of the Electoral Act 2022, the legal requirement remained unchanged.
He said any petitioner alleging non-compliance must call witnesses from each affected polling unit to prove their claims. He added that allegations of improper collation also required calling polling unit agents as witnesses to give evidence to back the claims polling unit by polling unit.
Mr Ukala said the petitioners – Mr Ighodalo and the PDP – failed woefully in this regard. He said they failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove their case.
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He stressed that the petitioners only called a total of 19 witnesses during the trial at the tribunal. He said of the 19 petitioners’ witnesses, only five of them were polling unit agents, despite that the petitioners raised complaints about 765 polling units.
He said this fell far short of the legal requirement to prove allegations of non-compliance at the affected polling units.
He also pointed out the failure of the petitioners to present Forms EC25D they complained about before the tribunal.
The lawyer maintained that Forms EC25D, and Forms EC25B as claimed by the petitioners, were the documents for recording the serial numbers of ballot papers.
Three-member bench of the Court of Appeal led by M. A. Danjuma reserved judgment after listening to the lawyers’ submissions.
Apart from the Ighodalo’s case, other appeals challenging Mr Okpebholo’s election are also expected to be ruled on today.
One of the appeals was filed by Action Alliance (AA) and its National Chairman, Rufai Omoaje, and the other by the Accord Party (AP)’s Bright Enabulele.
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