The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja, Friday, affirmed the declaration of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa as the duly elected governor of Delta state in the March 2019 gubernatorial election.
The court dismissed an appeal brought before it by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, Chief Great Ogboru and his party, seeking to unseat the governor, on various reasons.
A five-member panel of justices of the appellate court led by Justice Uzo Ndukwe-Anyanwu had, on Monday reserved judgment after counsels adopted and argued their brief of argument in the appeal.
The appellate court in its judgment found no merit in the appeal challenging Okowa’s election and consequently dismissed it while affirming the decision of the Delta state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which had earlier affirmed Okowa’s election.
The court held that the appellants failed to prove the allegations of over voting, malpractices and violations of Electoral Act and added that the appellate court cannot set aside the decision of a lower court, unless, such decision is perverse and that, in the instance case, the decision of the lower tribunal is not perverse.
The panel of justices also agreed with the tribunal that the failure of the appellants to call polling agents from all the 896 polling units across all the local government areas of the state to prove their allegations was fatal to their case.
