On Wednesday, the Enugu State Governorate Election Petitions Court reserved judgment on the petition challenging the Governor’s election. Pedro Mbah in the state gubernatorial election on March 18.
The Labor Party (LP) candidate in the elections, Chijioke Edeoga, questions the victory of Mr. Mbah of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).
The two sides in the matter adopted their final directions in writing during the hearing on Wednesday.
Panel chairman Kudirat Akano said the parties would be notified of a final judgment date on the petition.
The LP candidate’s lawyer, Adegboyega Awomolo, asked the court to grant the measures requested by the client to remove Mbah as governor.
Mr Awomolo, SAN, argued that granting the relief to remove the governor was necessary because it had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Mbah at the time of the election was not constitutionally qualified to challenge, as he allegedly filed the forged certificate of the National Youth Service Corps. (NYSC) to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The lawyer criticized the submissions made by Mr. Mbah’s witnesses, including those of Isa Mohammed, allegedly a State Security Service (SSS) official, who claimed that SSS conducted an investigation into the matter and found the allegation of falsification of the NYSC certificate against the governor as false.
“All the evidence showed that the second defendant (Mbah) did not collect his certificate. There is irrefutable evidence that on 3 July 2003, the second defendant (Mbah) became Chief of Staff of Enugu State under (former Governor) Chimaroke Nnamani. The third defense witness (Udeh), who claimed that he gave her letters, said that he did not know if he received her certificate,” Awomolo said.
“The statement of the third defense witness (SSS) showed that nowhere is it proven that the SSS investigated the process. Annex 63 showed that it did not come from the authority of the SSS; it also showed that the second defendant obtained his NYSC certificate illegally,” he added.
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But Mbah’s lawyers, Wale Olanikpekun and his INEC counterpart Abdul Mohammed, while adopting their addresses separately, opposed the LP lawyer’s request, insisting that Mbah did not forge his NYSC certificate.
They asked the court to dismiss Mr. Edeoga’s petitions as lacking merit.
mild drama
Meanwhile, there was mild drama when the LP candidate sought the correction of an error in his final speech in which he had mistakenly asked the court to remove Mr Mbah as “Governor of Rivers State”, instead of the state. from Enugu.
However, the three respondents to the petition, Mr. Mbah, INEC and PDP, opposed the request, emphasizing that the correction was an amendment to add additional direction.
ST Hon, another attorney for the petitioner, urged the court to invalidate the submission of the three defendants.
Mr. Hon, SAN argued that the Supreme Court had taken up the issue in the case of INEC VS Yusuf, 2020 Nigeria Weekly Law Report Part 1714, pp 374-399.
However, the chairman of the panel, Mr. Akano, said that the ruling on the grounds of the request for correction of the petitioner’s final written address would come along with the judgment.
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