Disqualify Aguocha for 'dual party membership', declare me winner, Ikuku tells tribunal * Your claims baseless, Aguocha fires back, wants petition thrown away

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Disqualify Aguocha for ‘dual party membership’, declare me winner, Ikuku tells tribunal

* Your claims baseless, Aguocha fires back, wants petition thrown away

By Steve Oko

Immediate-past Speaker of the Abia State House of Assembly, and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the February 25 national assembly election for Ikwuano-/Umuahia federal constituency, Rt. Hon. Chinedum Orji, has urged the Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Umuahia, to disqualify Hon. Obi Aguocha of the Labour Party, for allegedly not resigning his membership of the PDP before picking the LP ticket.

This is as the Chairman of the three-man panel, Justice Abubakar Kutigi, Wednesday reserved judgment in the suit by Orji seeking to annul Aguocha’s victory.

After all parties to the matter had respectively adopted their final written addresses, Justice Kutigi announced that a date yet-to-be-fixed, would be communicated to them for the final determination of the petition.

The LP candidate was declared winner of the contest by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, after polling a total of 48,199 votes while his closest rival, Orji, garnered 35, 296 votes.

But dissatisfied with the declaration, the former Speaker and his party raced to the tribunal to seek Aguocha’s removal.

Adopting his final written addresses Wednesday, through his Lead Counsel, Obinna Nkume, the PDP candidate urged the tribunal to remove the LP candidate on the grounds that the LP allegedly failed to submit the party’s membership register to the Independent INEC, 30 days before the poll as required by the Electoral Act.

He also urged the panel to disqualify Aguocha from participating in the contest, alleging that the lawmaker was a member of both the PDP, and LP during both the party primaries and the main election.

The former Speaker’s Lead Counsel further claimed that his client and not the LP candidate, won the highest number of lawful votes cast.

According to him, “the results my client got through his party agents were the same with the results presented by the INEC from the agency’s IREV”.

He claimed that the 1s Respondent swapped results in 53 disputed polling units where he allegedly inflated his figures and deflated the figures entered for the PDP candidate.

Citing the suit between Gov. Hope Uzodinma, and ex-Gov. Emeka Ihedioha of Imo State, decided by the Supreme Court in 2020, Orji’s Lead Counsel asserted that the court had the powers to recompute the votes in the disputed polling units and declare the highest scorer based on evidence before it.

Claiming that Rt. Hon. Orji secured the highest number of lawful votes cast, the 1st Petitioner’s Lead Counsel prayed the panel to annul Aguocha’s victory and declare the PDP candidate the rightful winner of the contest.

But Hon. Aguocha through his own Lead Counsel, Anaga Kalu Anaga, urged the panel to throw away the petition which he simply dismissed as “incompetent”.

According to him, the Petitioner could not produce evidence to prove that his claims were valid as the testimony of his witnesses was not “front-loaded” before the witnesses gave their oral testimony.

Aguocha’s lawyer insisted that a higher Court had already ruled that the evidence of a subpoenad witness ought to have been “front-loaded”.

He further argued that the claims of manipulation of election results could not be substantiated by the testimony of only one party agent that witnessed the election in a particular unit.

” You cannot use only one agent’s testimony at a particular unit to generalise in all the polling units. The Petitioner ought to have brought witnesses in the other affected polling units”, he contended.

The court hall was filled with lawyers, supporters of both candidates and members of the public interested in the matter.

Wawa News Global reports that the tribunal is expected to deliver judgment before the expiration of the 180-day window stipulated by the Electoral Act.

Judgment is therefore, expected on or before the middle of September.

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Steve Oko, Publisher/C.E.O, WaWa News Global. For more information on advert placement and news coverage, contact us on: 08038725600, or via email stevemanofgod2000@yahoo.com; wawanewsglobal@gmail.com Always read WaWa News Global - Your most dependable online news platform for the latest breaking news in Nigeria.