Edo Guber: Tribunal Delivers Judgment On Ighodalo’s Suit Wednesday

The Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal has fixed April 2, 2025, to deliver its judgment on the suit filed by Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenging Governor Monday Okpebholo’s victory in the September 21, 2024, gubernatorial election in the state.

The three-member panel of the tribunal, led by Justice Wilfred Kpochi, had on March 3 reserved judgment after the parties adopted their final briefs of argument.

It would be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on September 22 declared Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the governorship election, having polled 291,667 votes to defeat Ighodalo, who scored 247,274 and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP) with 22,763 votes.

Dissatisfied, the PDP and its candidate filed a petition at the tribunal, stating that the election was marred by irregularities, including over-voting, lack of ballot serialisation, errors in collation, and miscalculations in results.

During the tribunal hearings, the petitioners presented 19 witnesses and summoned a senior technical officer from INEC’s ICT department. The officer provided 154 BVAS machines as evidence to support claims of overvoting.

In the suit marked EPT/ED/GOV/02/2024, INEC did not call any witnesses in response to the petition. Okpebholo presented one witness, while the APC brought forward four witnesses before concluding their defence.

Adopting their final written address, the petitioners, through their team of lawyers led by Adetunji Oyeyipo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, alleged that there was a wrong computation of results in 765 polling units in the state.

According to him, results from the polling units were manipulated at the collation centres.

The petitioners urged the tribunal to nullify the Certificate of Return that was issued to Governor Okpebholo and declare Ighodalo as the winner of the election.

However, all the respondents in the matter, INEC, Okpebholo, and APC, prayed the tribunal to dismiss the petition, which they maintained was devoid of merit.

According to the respondents, the petitioners failed to provide credible evidence to establish their claim that they won the election.

INEC’s lead counsel, Kanu Agabi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, noted that the petitioners’ reliefs were inconsistent with the case they brought before the tribunal.

He noted that whereas the petitioners claimed that the gubernatorial election was invalid because of alleged non-compliance, they still sought to be declared the winner of the same poll.

Agabi further noted that despite the number of polling units, the petitioners challenged their results; they only brought five polling unit agents to testify before the tribunal.

Meanwhile, counsel for Governor Okpebholo, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, argued that the Supreme Court earlier held that one could not prove over-voting without the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines.

He insisted that the petitioners merely produced and dumped the BVAS before the tribunal without opening any of them to demonstrate the alleged over-voting.

Likewise, the APC, through its counsel, Mr Emmanuel Ukala, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, argued that the petitioners failed to discharge the burden of proof that was placed on them by the law, especially on the issue of over-voting.

He therefore urged the court to dismiss the petition for lack of merit.