Court of Appeal upholds Ighodalo as PDP Governorship candidate in Edo

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has reaffirmed Dr. Asue Ighodalo as the legitimate and duly nominated governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Edo State.

The ruling on Friday dismissed an appeal questioning Ighodalo’s candidacy, which was based on accusations of a forged voter’s card.

In response to the ruling, Dr. Ighodalo expressed his concerns over the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) decision to deploy electoral officers from Imo and Kogi States to supervise the election, stating that he lacks confidence in their ability to conduct a free and fair election.

Previously, Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court had also ruled in favor of Ighodalo, dismissing the case brought by Arthur Esene and Anselm Ojezua.

In the lead judgment of the Court of Appeal on Friday, Justice Hamma Barka affirmed the judgment by Justice Omotosho and held that the suit filed before the Federal High Court by Ojezua and four others was filed out of time and was statute barred.
Delivering the judgement in the Appeal with case no, CA/ABJ/CV/863/2024, the Appeal Court ruled that the “suit was filed after the time limit and is therefore dismissed.”

According to Justice Hamma Barka, “Jurisdiction is a threshold issue and a pre-election suit filed after the 14-day limit and any breach (even by one day), means that the court is without jurisdiction.”The Court further held that “Even on the merits, the court further held that the allegation of forgery was not proven at all by the Claimant as they woefully failed to prove the elements of the alleged forgery.”

Justice Barka therefore proceeded to strike out the appeal for being without merit and awarded N1 million costs each to PDP and Asue Ighodalo to be paid by the appellants.
With the ruling, all doubts and allegations surrounding the eligibility of Dr. Asue Ighodalo to contest for the September 21 governorship election have been cleared.

Ighodalo rejects Imo, Kogi INEC officials for Edo polls

Meanwhile, Speaking in an interview, Ighodalo said, “We are hearing rumours that INEC wants to come to our election with officials from Imo and officials from Kogi.

“We will please implore INEC that we in Edo State want fresh officials from places that have run electoral processes that are free and fair and not places where polls have been questioned. “I will please appreciate if INEC doesn’t bring Kogi officials or Imo officials into Edo State.”

On why he doesn’t want officials from the two states, he said: “Question marks have been placed on the processes in those two states. Edo State people are peace-loving, they know light from darkness, so they don’t want any process that is going to be subverted or subversive. We want a level-playing field so that the wishes of the people of Edo State are realized on September 21.”