Tribunal reserves judgment in suit by ex- Abia speaker to unseat LP candidate
By Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
The member representing Ikwuano/Umuahia North/Umuahia South federal constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Obi Aguocha, will know his fate in a yet-to-be-fixed date as the National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Umuahia, Wednesday, reserved judgment in a suit seeking to upturn his victory.
Immediate-past Speaker of the Abia House of Assembly, and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the February 25 national assembly poll, Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji, had approached the tribunal to challenge the LP candidate’s victory.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared Aguocha winner of the contest after polling a total of 48,199 votes to win his closest rival, Orji who scored 35, 296 votes.
However, dissatisfied with the declaration, the former Speaker and his party headed for the tribunal to seek the nullification of the LP candidate’s victory.
All the parties in the matter adopted their final written addresses before the panel at the Wednesday sitting.
Adopting his final written addresses through his Lead Counsel, Obinna Nkume, the 1st Petitioner urged the tribunal to remove the LP candidate, alleging that the LP failed to submit the party’s membership register to the Independent INEC, 30 days before the poll as required by the Electoral Act.
Orji’s lawyer further argued that Aguocha was, abinitio, not qualified to contest in the race, alleging that the LP candidate was a member of both the PDP, and LP during the party primaries as well as the main election.
He claimed that Aguocha did not resign his membership of the PDP before flying the LP flag.
Orji’s Lead Counsel further claimed that his client and not the LP candidate, won the highest number of lawful votes cast.
He claimed that the results his client client got through his party agents were the same with the results presented by the INEC from the agency’s IREV.
The lawyer claimed that the LP candidate swapped results in 53 disputed polling units where LP candidate allegedly inflated figures and deflated the figures entered for the PDP candidate.
To substantiate his claims, the lawyer cited the suit between Gov. Hope Uzodinma, and ex-Gov. Emeka Ihedioha of Imo State, decided by the Supreme Court in 2020, arguing that the court has the powers to recompute the votes in the disputed polling units and declare the highest scorer based on evidence before it.
Meanwhile, Hon. Aguocha through his Lead Counsel, Anaga Kalu Anaga, urged the panel to throw away the petition which he simply dismissed as “incompetent”.
He told the tribunal that the Petitioner could not produce evidence to prove that his claims were valid as the testimony of his witnesses was not “front-loaded” before the witnesses gave their oral testimony.
Aguocha’s lawyer insisted that a higher Court had already ruled that the evidence of a witness by subpoena ought to have been “front-loaded”.
He further argued that the claims of manipulation of election results could not be substantiated by the testimony of only one party agent that witnessed the election in a particular unit.
” You cannot use only one agent’s testimony at a particular unit to generalise in all the polling units. The Petitioner ought to have brought witnesses in the other affected polling units”, he contended.
After all parties had adopted their final written addresses, Chairman of the three-man panel, Justice Abubakar Kutigi, said that a date yet-to-be-fixed, would be communicated to them for judgment.
