Enugu Guber: Tribunal Reserves Judgment As Parties Adopt Final Address

The petition by Barr Chijioke Edeoga, the governorship candidate for the Labour Party, LP, challenging the election of Governor Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the State’s March 18 governorship election, has been placed on hold by the Enugu State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared Mbah the winner of the State’s governorship race, but Edeoga is contesting that decision.

On Wednesday, each party adopted their respective closing statements to the tribunal.

Justice Kudirat Morayo Akano, the panel’s chair, said the parties will be properly informed of the date.

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Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, the attorney for Edeoga, adopted his final address and pleaded with the tribunal to support his clients’ claims and provide the requested reliefs.

This, he claimed, was because Mbah’s ineligibility to run for office at the time of the election had been shown beyond a reasonable doubt as a result of his submission to INEC of a fake National Youth Service Corps, or NYSC, certificate.

He claimed that the first petitioner’s witness was a representative of the NYSC, the Director in charge of corps certification, and that his testimony established the certificate’s non-NYSC origins beyond a reasonable doubt.

“All evidence proved that the second respondent (Mbah) did not collect his certificate.

“There is incontrovertible evidence that on July 3, 2003, the second respondent (Mbah) became the Chief of Staff of Enugu State to Chimaroke Nnamani.

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“The third defence witness (Udeh), who claimed that he gave letters to him, said he did not know if he got his certificate.

“The evidence of the third Defense witness (DSS) showed that there is no where it is proven that DSS investigated the process. Exhibit 63 showed that he did not come from the DSS authority; it also showed that the second respondent procured his NYSC certificate illegally,” he said.

He sought the Court to declare the election null and void in 14 polling places in the Nkanu East and Igbo-Etiti council areas and 19 polling places in the Udenu Local Government Area due to incorrect counting and overvoting.

“The court has the power to order a cancellation in those polling units, I pray to the tribunal to uphold justice.

Edeoga’s attorney had earlier asked the tribunal to grant him permission to change a part of his address where he had mistakenly used the name Rivers in the location in Enugu.

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Adopting his speech, Mr. Abdul Mohammed, counsel for INEC, requested the tribunal to reject Edeoga’s appeal with high costs.

Mohammed made the case that the alleged letter from the NYSC denying Mbah’s NYSC certificate should not be taken seriously.

“This document did not meet the threshold of admissibility as no proof of payment of their certification was ever before the court.

“The second petitioner’s witness was not the maker of the document, we therefore submit that having presented substantial evidence in proof of the allegation that NYSC is forged, there is no document for the court to rely on,” he said.

Chief Wale Olanikpekun, the attorney for the second respondent, requested that the tribunal dismiss Edeoga’s petitions because they were without merit and were only intended to be an academic exercise.

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“NYSC is not a qualification for contesting the governorship election.

“They have not presented any proof. The petitioner’s witnesses, who came to testify in court were agents without identities, PW 6,7,9,10,11,12,13,22 and 28 admitted that there was no over voting,” he said.

The third respondent’s attorney, Mr. Alex Izinyon, urged the court to dismiss the petition entirely since it was a case of “shadow chasing.”

Izinyon asserted that the evidence needed in the voting units was not provided by the agents, and that this caused them to veer from their original argument because the certificate in question did not contain any proof of forgery.

The three respondents had previously resisted the petitioners’ request to have their written final addresses corrected, claiming that they had already adopted their own final addresses.

Mohammed fiercely objected to the application, claiming that the modification amounted to an amendment to include an additional address.

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But the petitioner’s attorney, S.T. Hon, urged the tribunal to reject the three respondents’ argument, pointing out that the Supreme Court had already addressed the matter in the INEC v. Yusuf case, 2020 of the Nigeria Weekly Law Report Part 1714, pages 374–399.(C-F).

He asserts that the Supreme Court has held that the terms “amendment” and “addition” are synonymous.

According to Justice Akano, the decision about the petitioner’s final written address correction would be delivered along with the judgement.

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