The election of Governor Udom Emmanuel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has again been unanimously upheld by five-man panel of the Court of Appeal.
The court Wednesday in Calabar, the capital of Cross River state, reaffirmed the governor as the duly elected winner of the March 9 Akwa Ibom state governorship election and ordered the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate, Nsima Ekere, to pay N500,000 as fine to the winner.
Ekere and the APC had filed an appeal against the judgement of the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal judgement delivered on September 5, 2019, at Uyo, that declared Emmanuel winner of the election.
The tribunal dismissed Ekere’s petition for wanting in merit, and held that the petitioner could not lead credible evidence to prove his claims that the elections were not conducted in substantial compliance with the Electoral Act.
Delivering judgement in the Appeal challenging the re-election of Governor Emmanuel, the five-man panel affirmed the decision of the tribunal by rejecting the series of documents filed by the Ekere at the tribunal.
It then held that the reasoning of the tribunal were unassailable and cited that the documents were all public documents and therefore could not be admissible if there were not properly brought as Certified True Copies of the public documents sought to be tendered.
Also, it rejected arguments that the tribunal was not right in holding that the petitioner/appellant did not lead credible evidence to prove their case, and subsequently affirmed the tribunal’s judgement and upheld the tribunal’s findings on evidence.
The Appellate Court noted that out of the results of twenty-one (21) Local Government Areas challenged, the petitioner did not lead any evidence in proof of their case in eight (8) and led very scanty evidence which on cross-examination were rendered very impotent in the other local governments were they made any effort to prove their claims.
The court again held that the decision of the tribunal was unassailable on that score and therefore affirmed the same.
Furthermore, it agreed with the tribunal for not relying on documents dumped on it by the petitioners without establishing them relevant to any of the issues they raised and for which they had sought relief.
Consequently, the Court of Appeal affirmed Udom Emmanuel’s victory as the duly elected governor of Akwa Ibom state and awarded the cost of N500,000 in favour of the governor (First Respondent) to be paid by Nsima Ekere.
