The Court of Appeal sitting in Lagos has upheld the victory of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate Peter Mbah as the Governor of Enugu State in the March 18 election. The Appellate Court, in a unanimous decision, dismissed the appeal filed by the Labour Party governorship candidate, Chijioke Edeoga, as lacking in merit and further upheld the judgment of the Enugu Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal delivered in September.
The opposition raised three (3) issues, that Peter Mbah was not qualified to contest. The three-member panel, led by Justice Tani Yusuf-Hassan, held that the appellant failed to prove that Mbah forged his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate, hence concluded that the Labour Party (LP) and its governorship candidate failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove that Mbah was not qualified to contest the election.
Over voting; on this allegation, Justice Hassan stated in her lead judgement that the “Voters’ Register” was not presented before the lower tribunal. She, therefore, said that failure to submit the voters’ register rendered the appeal inadmissible.
The court also determined that the witnesses presented by the Labour Party did not sufficiently prove the existence of over-voting in the governorship election.
The judgement comes days after the ruling of a Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday awarding N5 million in damages against the NYSC for claiming that its discharge certificate held by Mbah was fake.
Judge Nyang Ekwo held that the NYSC and its Director General were guilty of misrepresentation of material facts.
