SUPREME COURT DECISION ON IMO: How the 4th candidate became the Governor

The recent Supreme Court decision sacking former Governor Emeka Ihedioha of PDP in favour of Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State has left my phone buzzing and buzzing with calls for clarification. The question is a simple one. How did the Supreme Court arrive at their decision that Uzodinma who came 4th in the election of 9th March 2019 has now being found to be the Governor? Can this decision be justified in law?

In order to understand what happened, we must resort to the facts of what happened during the election of 9th March, 2019. At the end of the election, INEC declared the following results:  

PDP-273, 404

AA-190,364

APGA-114,676

APC-96,458

People have reasoned that with the above result, there was no reason why the Supreme Court should have declared APC winner. But you need to ask if the above result was correctly computed by INEC or there are some errors that warranted Governor Uzodinma of APC to approached the Court for redress. The main reason why Uzodinma went to Court is that:

According to him, his votes were unlawfully excluded to ensure his placement at the 4th position. The main reason he went to court was to prove that if the votes wrongly excluded by INEC is added back, he won the election. In proof of his case, Uzodimma called 54 witnesses and founded his complaint and evidence on the exclusion of the result of 388 polling units at the collation center.

What was clear from the pleadings of all the parties was that there was election at the polling units which was free and fair. Of course, it would have been illogical and absurd for INEC or PDP to have said election at polling units were not free and fair. Thus, what arose for determination by the tribunal and eventually Supreme Court was what happened at the collation centre, whether any result was omitted or not. In proving his case, Uzodinma tendered the result of the 388 polling units, called 54 party agents and ward collation agents. Since the result tendered by Uzodinma was in doubt, and copies of all result are usually given to the police at every polling unit, Uzodinma called the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of operations during the election to tender their own counter copies of the result for the 388 polling units given to policemen at each polling unit at the end of the election. These police counter copies of the results of the election collaborated or tallied with the result tendered by Uzodimma in all material particulars.

It was also discovered that the ward collation form EC8B did not contain the results of the 388 units thus evidencing the exclusion. The distribution chart for sensitive materials used by INEC in the election and which was tendered by Uzodinma and confirmed by the INEC witness called by PDP, showed that the serial numbers of the result tendered by the police and Uzodinma fall within the serial number distributed by INEC thus proving the authenticity of the results.

There was no legally viable answer from INEC as to why these results were not collated before the declaration. Thus, the Court has no choice but to add the result of these 388 polling units to the initial result which now gave Uzodinma a resounding victory with the highest votes.

Justice Kekere-Ekun said with the results from the 388 polling units added, Uzodinma polled a majority of the lawful votes and ought to have been declared the winner of the election by INEC.

6 NOTABLE LESSONS IN THIS DECISION

1.    Since Uzodinma called 54 witnesses only and the Supreme Court agreed that result of 388 polling units were excluded then a precedent is now set that you must not call at least 1 witness per polling unit. This is a welcome development as against the previous unreasonable and impossible position that requires a petitioner to call thousands of witnesses in Governorship election. This new position is closer and within the legal provision of section 200 of Evidence Act that no particular number of witnesses shall be required provided there is evidence of the fact.

2.   Unlike Atiku who went fishing for Cyber result, the SC has now endorsed the practice of using counter copies of result giving to either Party agents, Police or pasted at polling units to prove election result. Political Parties and security agents parallel record or election results given to them are good source materials to ascertain correct election results.

For fuller lessons of this decision and its implication on future elections, private chat 08038944639 or send email to [email protected]

P. D. Pius, Esq

Abuja, Nigeria