|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Nasarawa State PDP governorship candidate David Ombugadu
By Linus Ogbu, Lafia
The Governorship Elections Petition Tribunal sitting in Lafia on Monday declared David Ombugadu of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of March 18 governorship election in the state.
In a virtual judgement that lasted for more than four hours, Justice Ezekiel Ajayi, Chairman of the panel in a majority judgement declared Ombugadu as the rightful winner of the election and not Gov. Abdullahi Sule of All Progressives Congress (APC).
The majority judgement was agreed by Justice Chiemelie Onaga, member one of the panel.
The tribunal collated the lawful results casted at the various polling units and declared that Ombugadu has the majority of valid votes at the election.
The chairman of the tribunal added that the candidate of PDP had provided the results of the various polling units, forms EC 8A and had proved to the tribunal that the results were manipulated in favour of the APC.
He, therefore ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the certificate of return issued to Sule and issue a new one to the rightful winner.
Meanwhile, there was a dissenting judgement delivered by Justice Ibrahim Mashi, member two of the panel.
The member in his dissenting judgement dismissed the petition filed by the PDP candidate for lacking in merit.
He said that the petitioner had failed to prove his case and therefore upheld the declaration of Gov. Sule.
Reacting to the judgement, Johnson Usman, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), counsel to the petitioner lauded the tribunal for a detailed judgement.
The counsel added that the tribunal had proved that indeed court is the last hope of a common man by affirming the decision of the majority of the people of the state at the poll.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.