Break: Edo -Governorship Election Tribunal confirmed Monday Okpebholo as governor

In particular, the tribunal has criticized the failure of the PDP to present credible evidence to support the allegations of overpayment and irregularities for elections. The Edo State Management election Petition Tribunal confirmed Okpebholo on Monday as the properly elected Governor of the Edo State, who rejected the petitions that disputed his victory. In a series of three statements made on Wednesday, the tribunal of petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Action Alliance (AA) and ACCORD Party (AP) rejected and ruled that they failed to provide adequate evidence to substantiate their claims of election manure practice. In particular, the tribunal has criticized the failure of the PDP to present credible evidence to support the allegations of overpayment and irregularities for elections. The panel found that the party did not mention the agents of the polling unit as witnesses of all the units where he alleged irregularities took place. However, the tribunal noted that from the 19 Witnesses hosted by the PDP, 14 were, and local government agents. In contrast, the party’s “Star Witness”, which claims to be a director of strategy, played no direct role in performing the election. The tribunal found it insufficient to prove the allegations of malpractice. The tribunal further ruled that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) reports offered by the requesters were simply “dumped” on the court without proper analysis or confirmation. According to him, the evidence provided insufficient to change the outcome of the election. Earlier on Wednesday, Saharan Porters reported that the tribunal, who was sitting in Abuja, rejected the petitions submitted by the AA and the Accord Party and challenged the election of Governor Okpebolo. In its ruling on Wednesday, the tribunal hit the petition that AA and his candidate, Rufai Omoaje, submitted, and described it as a lack of merit and frivolous. The Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) declared Okpebholo as the winner of the governor election with 291,667 votes and defeated his closest opponent, Asue Ighodalo of the PDP, who received 247,655 votes. Similarly, the tribunal, which held its proceedings at the National Judicial Institute (NJI) in Abuja, rejected the petition submitted by the Accord Party. The court ruled that the party and his candidate for the governor, Dr. Bright enabulele, not their allegations of malpractice for election providers. The requesters demanded widespread incidents of ballots, harassment of voters and use, but the tribunal noted that they failed to provide credible evidence or mention any specific offenders. Furthermore, the tribunal observed contradictions in the arguments of the requesters-on one side they claimed that they were not complying with the Electoral Act. They sought the vanity of the election, while on the other hand they requested to be declared the winners of the same election, which according to them were flawed. In his final decision, the tribunal concluded that there was no material evidence that justified the annulment of the election results. This reaffirmed the victory of Okpebholo, saying that the election was executed in accordance with the law and was declared properly by Inec.