One of the latest judgement delivered by the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Lafia, last Monday in favor of Dr. David Emmanuel Ombugadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was a judgement of two against one by the three-man tribunal judges.

The panel, made up of Justice Ezekiel Ajayi, chairman; Justices Chiemelie Onaga and Ibrahim Mashi as members, was inaugurated and commenced hearing on May 30, to listen to arguments from both the petitioners and the respondents.

The petitioners were the Governorship candidate of the PDP, Dr. David Ombugadu and the PDP, while the respondents in the suit were the incumbent Governor Abdullahi Sule, first respondent. The second and the third respondents were Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), respectively.

Ombugadu and the PDP had challenged the declaration of Abdullahi Sule of APC winner in the March 18 Governorship election by INEC, alleging over voting in some polling units and illegal cancelation of votes where PDP believed to have strong holds.

After the Justices had carefully listened to the petitioners and the respondents from the pre-hearing session to the main hearing, where the substances of cases where intensively argued and the final closing addresses submitted, the tribunal fixed Monday October 2 for the final judgement, and consequently, all parties to the case were served with the notice.

On the day of the tribunal judgement, there was heavy security presence and roads leading to the Tribunal were barricaded. Only few persons were granted access to the venue where the judgement was to take place.

At the point of delivering the judgement, it was announced that the judgement will be delivered via zoom. This announcement created an apprehension to both petitioners and respondents.

The over four-hour judgement was delivered in dissenting judgement. The tribunal chairman, Justice Ajayi and Justice Onaga in their unanimous judgement on the motion seeking to strike out identified paragraphs of the Petitioners’ reply to first Respondent’s reply was dismissed in its entirety.

The second Respondent’s motion seeking to strike out identified paragraphs of the Petitioners’ Reply to second respondent’s reply was also dismissed in its entirety.

Furthermore, the Petitioners’ motions to strike out identified paragraphs of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents’ Replies to the Petition for being cross petition was dismissed in their entirety.

The majority judgement declared that the objections on BVAS Machine/ Screenshots tendered by PDP was overruled because the BVAS were pleaded, relevant and admissible.

After the evaluation of all the final written addresses, especially where the petitioners contended that justice cannot be sacrificed on the altar of technicalities, the tribunal held that the polling units’ results were not properly collated and that affected the outcome of the election.

On contention that PDP did not call polling unit agents, the Tribunal held that PDP’s case was largely documentary, noting that form EC8A was the pyramid for election results.

The Tribunal ruled that forms EC8As indeed contradicted forms EC8Bs in the wards identified by the petitioners.

To determine the true winner in the March 18 governorship election, the tribunal deducted the contentious vote of Ciroma, having compared the entries in polling unit results with the ward result.

The tribunal also straightened incorrect votes ascribed to Gayam by deducting correctly Ciroma and and Gayam and regularized the records based on the evidence.

According to the majority judgement, the law was that it is only the presiding officers that can cancel polling units results against what happened to Ashige Ward.

The tribunal therefore restored Ashige’s results just as it agreed with the petitioners on Kanje-Abuni, noting that votes wrongly added to 2nd Respondent were deducted while petitioners’ votes unjustly reduced have been added.

Furthermore, Alwazan Mada polling unit votes in Doma was restored in favour of the petitioners. In Azara and Kanje/Abuni of Awe LGA, all the contentious votes were regularized.

In the final result, the majority judgement stated that the PDP candidate scored 293, 653 to defeat the APC candidate who scored 289,523.

This was against the result initially declared by INEC which put APC’s score at 347, 209 and PDP at 283,106.

The Tribunal declared that the candidate of the PDP, Dr. David Ombugadu, won the governorship election in Nasarawa State with 4,130 gap.

It was on these ground and many others, the majority judgement delivered on Monday nullified the victory of governor Abdullahi Sule and declared Ombugadu of the PDP a winner of the March 18 governorship election.

However, in a split judgement delivered by Justice Ibrahim Mashi, which lasted for over two hours, he dismissed the petitioners for failure to prove that they actually won the March 18 governorship election in the state.

The minority judgement delivered by Justice Mashi stated that Governor Abdullahi Sule of the APC won with a total of 3,799.

It could be recalled that in the March 18 governorship election, INEC declared the incumbent governor Abdullahi Sule of the APC as winner, having scored 347,209 total number of vote while David Ombugadu of the PDP scored 283,016 to emerge second. (The Guardian)

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