Imo: Details Of Ihedioha’s Supreme Court Appeal Against Uzodinma, APC

The Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha, has called on the Supreme Court to set aside the judgment delivered in favour of Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress.

Ihedioha and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) filed their application through their lawyer Chief Kanu Agabi, SAN, pursuant to Section 6 (6) of the 1999 Constitution as amended and Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act, 2004.

Ihedioha noted that the apex court was misled into giving the ruling, he charged the court to set aside its decision.

PDP and its governorship candidate claimed that APC and the governor of Imo State were misled to believe that 213,495 votes were unlawfully excluded from the votes they had during the governorship election in the state.

They recalled that that Uzodinma, while under cross-examination, admitted that he was the person, who computed the result that gave him the 213,495 votes alleged to have been excluded from his total votes in the election and not INEC.

“The fraudulent nature of the additional votes was demonstrated by the fact that the total votes cast as shown in the first appellant/respondent’s computation was more than the total number of voters accredited for the election and in some polling units more than the total number of registered voters.”

“The fraud was also demonstrated by the fact that the result computed by the first appellant/respondent showed only the votes of the first applicant and the first appellant/respondent without specifying the votes scored by the other 68 candidates who participated in the election.”

“The judgment which is a nullity ought to be set aside because it was given per incuriam, meaning the previous court judgment failed to pay attention to relevant statutory provision or precedents.”

“That the judgment is a nullity having been delivered without jurisdiction”, they noted.

PDP and its governorship candidate revealed that by Exhibit A1, the total number of voters accredited for the election was 823, 743, while the total valid votes cast was 731, 485.

They noted that the inclusion of 213, 695 votes for the APC candidate made the total number of votes cast at the election to be more than the total number of voters accredited for the election.

The applicants, among other grounds, argued that the majority judgment of the Court of Appeal dismissing Uzodinma’s petition as incompetent continues to subsist as the appeal against that decision was not considered by the apex court.