Appeal Court Dismisses Aduda’s Petition, Declares Labour Party’s Ireti Kingibe Authentic FCT Senator

The Labour Party (LP) Senator representing the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Ireti Kingibe, has secured a significant victory as the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Wednesday dismissed the application filed by former Senator, Philip Aduda of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Naija News reports that the appellate court, in the judgment delivered via Zoom, dismissed Aduda’s appeal for lacking in merit.

Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Returning Officer for the FCT senatorial election, Prof. Sani Saka, had declared Kingibe the winner of the poll after scoring 202,175 votes to defeat Aduda, who garnered 100,544 votes and came second in the election.

However, Aduda’s legal team approached the National Assembly election petitions tribunal sitting in Abuja, seeking the nullification of Kingibe’s victory.

The PDP’s legal team alleged that the collation of results across the FCT area councils was yet to be concluded when Kingibe was declared the winner by the electoral umpire, but the Tribunal dismissed Aduda’s petition for lacking in merit and upheld Kingibe’s victory at the February 25, 2023 polls.

Unsatisfied with the Tribunal’s verdict, Aduda’s legal team applied to the Court of Appeal, seeking to set aside the judgment of the Tribunal.

But, Kingibe, through her lawyers, argued before the Court of Appeal that Aduda’s petition was rightly dismissed and urged the appellate court to affirm the Tribunal’s judgement.

The Court of Appeal, in its judgment delivered by Justice Daniel Kahiru, held that Aduda did not tender the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine data and voter register to prove the allegation of irregularities in the conduct of the election.

Kahiru held the appellants also failed to prove overvoting while affirming Ireti as the winner.

The judge said, “All the issues in this appeal are resolved against the appellant.”