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Anxiety As Supreme Court Re-Opens Ihedioha vs Uzodinma Governorship Case In Imo State

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Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Nigeria will today Tuesday, 18th February, re-visit its judgment on the outcome of the 2019 Imo State governorship election.

It will be recalled as earlier reported by this online medium that the Supreme Court on January 15, sacked Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as Imo State Governor and ordered that Hope Uzodinma of the All progressives Congress (APC), be installed as the winner of the March 9 governorship election in the State.

Uzodinma has since been sworn in as the executive governor of Imo State following the court order.

However, Ihedioha and the PDP vehemently disagreed with the judgment of the apex court and are seeking that the court upturns its earlier judgment on the Imo State governorship election.

Emeka Ihedioha had been declared the winner of the March 19 governorship election in Imo State with 273,404 votes. In second position was Uche Nwosu of the Action Alliance who polled a total of 190,364 votes.

The candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Ifeanyi Ararume came third with 114, 676 votes while Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) came a distant fourth with 96,458 votes.

Uzodinma, however, approached the election tribunal with claims that his results in some polling units were illegally cancelled. The tribunal, as well as the appeal court, threw out his claims for lack of merit.

Not deterred, Uzodinma and his party took their case to the Supreme Court and the apex court ruled in their favour on January 15, 2020, nullifying the election victory of Ihedioha and the PDP.

A seven-man panel of the supreme court agreed with Ihedioha that results in 388 polling units were unlawfully excluded during the collation of the final governorship election result in Imo State.

The Court, therefore, ruled that with the results from the 388 polling units added, Mr Uzodinma polled a majority of the lawful votes and ought to have been declared the winner of the election by the Nation’s electoral umpire – the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC).

However, the court failed to disclose details of the new votes scored by each of the candidates after the addition of the results from the 388 polling units, a decision that caused several mixed reactions from Nigerians.

The Collation Officer for the election, Prof. B.C. Ozunda, had announced a total number of registered voters in Imo to be: 2,037,569.

He broke it down to include 585,741 accredited voters and 542,777 votes were cast. Valid votes were 511,586 and rejected votes were 31,191.

Today, the Supreme Court has two options before it – to either upturn or uphold its decision.