Tribunal Reserves Judgement In Edo Governorship Election Dispute

He also argued that the number of polling units' agents called as witnesses represented an insignificant percent of the number of polling units in Edo.
Also, Counsel to the governor, Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition on the grounds that it had become an academic exercise.
Ikpeazu noted  that in the course of their research, they carefully extracted the polling units for which the petitioners tendered documents and compared them to the ones they presented, adding that his client was well ahead of the petitioner in the polls.
On form EC25B where the petitioners claimed the serial numbers of sensitive materials must be given, Ikpeazu said that all that was required for the form was the quantity of electoral materials received, and quantity returned, pointing out that,
the petitioners, by not tendering the right documents, had failed to prove overvoting on the whole.
Responding, counsel to the petitioners, Ken Moze, SAN, noted that even with  4,519 polling units in the state, the complaint in the petition concerned only 765 of them, adding that, it is law that successful prosecution of election petition was not about the percentage of the total polling units in the state but the effect of the successful establishment of the complaints lodged.

According to Moze,  the petition must be considered holistically and not in parts.

Commenting on the issue of not presenting the tribunal with an alternative result, he said it was on record that all the results before the tribunal were tendered by his client.
On why the petitioners called only five polling unit agents, he said that the grouse of his client was with what happened at the collation centres and not at the polling units so they didn’t need more than five agents to testify.
Speaking on the claim that they dumped documents on the tribunal, Moze said that all the documents they tendered were duly certified by INEC and were tendered without objection from the commission.
He also held that the tribunal had the jurisdiction to hear the petition because their allegations were not pre-election matters.
After hearing all the arguments, Justice Kpochi reserved judgment in the matter to a date to be communicated to the parties by the secretary of the tribunal. (Channels Television).

The PDP and its governorship candidate, Mr Asue ighodalo, approached the tribunal, praying for it to invalidate the outcome of the governorship election on the grounds of alleged non-compliance with the Electoral Act of 2022.