The Enugu State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting on Thursday upheld the election of Dr. Peter Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of the March 18 election.
This has thus diffused the tension that was built up in the state prior to the delivery of the judgment.
The judgment equally put at bay the popular held belief that the Labour Party candidate, Edeoga would have won, going by the many victories recorded by the party candidates for Senate, Reps and Assembly elections which they massively won.
The Labour Party candidate, Chijioke Edeoga, had approached the tribunal to challenge the declaration on the grounds that Mbah wasn’t qualified to stand for the election, having allegedly forged his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate and cases of over-voting in Udenu, Nkanu East and Enugu East local government areas.
But the tribunal presided by Justice Kudirat Murayo Akano dismissed all grounds of petition.
The panel held that NYSC wasn’t a requirement for contesting for the office of the governor and there’s nowhere that the NYSC Certificate was attached to the documents Mbah submitted to INEC by the respondent.
On the issue of forging NYSC certificate, the panel discountenanced all the evidences by the DSS, NYSC official and others because they weren’t in compliance with paragraph 4, subsection 5D of the evidence act. Only the witness of the pw26 which was described as a hearsay by the panel and those not help the petitioners and therefore resolved the issue of Certificate Forgery in favour of Mbah.
