Delta Governorship Tribunal Ruling Slated For Thursday In Abuja

Our great party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Delta State Chapter in an advertorial published in the Nation and Vanguard Newspapers stated our position clearly, describing the Justice Nasiru Gunmi's tribunal ruling as unfortunate, a grave travesty of justice and a major setback to the rule of law and impunity in our electoral process.

Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa through his media aide, Ossai Ovie Success, appeared to be scared of the outcome of the much awaited Court of Appeal Judgment and therefore crafted an article to pr-empt or indirectly control the legal reasoning of the Justices of the Court of Appeal.

The said article titled: WHY EMERHOR PETITION FAILED, was widely circulated on social media networks so as to mischievously misplace facts. It dwells on legal issues currently being tested for validity at the Court of Appeal.

For the purpose of emphasis, APC Delta and its candidate, Olorogun Otega Emerhor states as follows:

The ruling of the tribunal chaired by Honourable Justice Gunmi ought to be in favour of the petitioners but the PANEL went ahead to play DEFENCE on behalf of the Respondents by discrediting the certified card readers accreditation report admitted as exhibit from INEC when it ruled that "THERE IS UNCERTAINTY AS TO WHETHER THE ADMITTED CARD READERS ACCREDITATION REPORT CAPTURES ALL OF THE ACCREDITED VOTERS." The question is how did the tribunal arrived at this ruling?

Viewed against the ruling of the Court of Appeal in Akwa Ibom tribunal, it was held that Card Readers have become an integral lawful part of the electoral process and that accreditation done manually must be accompanied with duly completed and signed Incidents Forms otherwise such manual accreditation and votes allocated becomes null and void. A complete rerun was declared in Akwa Ibom and no longer in 18 local government areas as earlier ordered by the tribunal. Therefore, manual accreditation not accompanied with duly completed and signed INCIDENTS FORMS amounts to a mere waste of time and human resources.

It remains obvious that the manual accreditation allegedly carried out by INEC in Delta State were not accompanied by duly completed and signed INCIDENTS FORMS and to that effect the votes allocated to the manually accredited voters stands null and void, as was held in APC vs PDP in Akwa Ibom Appeal ruling.

**The claim that voters captured by card readers in Delta State were not completely uploaded as at the time the petitioners obtained the certified true copies, the question that a reasonable man would ask is: "is there no time limit to upload genuine card readers captured voters"?

INEC headquarters shut down her server after the due period allocated for upload of data from readers across the country expired. INEC headquarters cannot wait forever for Delta INEC to upload their data. The late upload of data by DELTA INEC was part of the fraudulent strategies adopted by the compromised INEC staff in Delta State criminally sell victory to Okowa and PDP. Okowa and INEC merely allocated votes through manual accreditation.

**On the issue of 17 paragraph petition, it is not the duty of the panel to determine how many pages a petitioner should produce to make his or her case valid or credible. What is relevant are FACTS in issue and evidence adduced in support of the petitioners petition. The Judge only played to the gallery and sourcing for frivolous reasons to favour the Respondents in his ruling. The Appeal Court will look into this.

**PDP once celebrated the victory of Chief Ighoyota Amori, spending over N100 million only for the celebration but the forthright Justices of the Court of Appeal in Benin quashed the tribunal ruling and declared Obaise Omo Agege of the Labour Party winner of the Delta Central Senatorial election. This is why Okowa and PDP are catching cold.

The fear of loosing at the Court of Appeal forced Okowa Social Media team to come up with a mischievous review of the ruling of Justice Gunmi tribunal which has been heavily criticized for lack of merit and miscarriage of justice in favour of the Respondents. Unfortunately for Okowa and PDP, things will not work for them at the Court of Appeal as it was in the tribunal were Okowa's led Counsel lost a whopping $200,000 in his hotel room in Asaba to cleaners. The police could not recover the money till date.

**The petitioner through its star witness, Barrister Ore Ohimor, testified and placed before the tribunal an analysis of over voting through manual accreditation without validly signed INCIDENTS FORMS and being a comparison of card readers accreditation per polling units and Form EC8A results from the same units.

This analysis which was admitted as an exhibit showed over voting in 1,847 polling units or 61% of the 3,329 polling units across the 25 local government areas of the State as captured in the card readers report. Again, the PANEL dramatically decided to rule to EXPUNGE Barrister Ohimor's analysis from the tribunal proceedings. And why? That the fatal and factual analysis was only front loaded with the reply of the petitioners to the Respondents and ought to have been front loaded with the original petition. This is a technical ground which ordinarily ought not to warrant it being expunged from the tribunal proceedings.

It is a truism that the fraud in the Delta State governorship election was perpetuated through the manual accreditation not supported with duly completed and signed INCIDENTS FORMS. The late uploading of card readers data was another electoral malpractice carefully but foolishly crafted by the Respondents. Their victory will certainly crash at the APPELLATE COURT.

From the foregoing and other reasons not enumerated here but contained in the Appellants prayers at the Court of Appeal, the Petitioners at the Tribunal lost the case to the PANEL and NOT Okowa and PDP. It was and still a day light robbery with too many finger prints left behind.

Chief Ighoyota Amori's failure at the Court of Appeal is a pointer to the fact that over voting occurred in Delta Gubernatorial elections and a substantial confirmation that PDP and compromised INEC staff rigged elections in Delta State. The Akwa Ibom and Rivers States rulings at the Appeal Court are very instructive and will certainly make nonsense of Justice Gunmi's ruling.

APC is sure of victory. Okowa's winning votes of 724,680 far exceeded the captured 715,392 voters and valid votes. Okowa and PDP cannot hide under manual accreditation to rig election and thereafter claim victory. NEVER!

The Appeal ruling is scheduled for Thursday in Abuja.