Imo Guber Poll: Araraume Takes Battle to Court of Appeal

Alex Enumah

The legal battle between the candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the March 9, governorship election in Imo State, Senator Ifeanyi Araraume and Governor Emeka Ihedioha has moved to the Court of Appeal, with Araraume asking the court to set aside the judgement of the Imo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which upheld the election of Ihedioha as Imo State Governor.

The three-man panel of the tribunal had in a unanimous decision delivered on September 21, held that Ihedioha was lawfully declared winner of the governorship election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The tribunal chaired by Justice Malami Dongondaji, had in the judgement dismissed Araraume’s petition for lacking in merit on the grounds that the petitioners failed to prove allegations made in their petition.

Araraume and his party, APGA, had in their petition argued that Ihedioha did not obtain the constitutional one-quarter of the votes in at least two-thirds of the 27 local government areas of the state, in line with Section 179 of the Constitution.

They had in addition alleged massive Irregularities, hijacking and diversion of electoral materials and substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act.

But the tribunal in its judgement held that the case of the petitioners was unmeritorious because they failed to call relevant witnesses and that evidence of witnesses called was based on hearsay.

The tribunal in addition rejected documents tendered by the petitioners in support of their claims on the grounds that those who led evidence in the documents were not the makers of the documents.

“The petitioners failed to proffer cogent, credible and sufficient evidence to entitle them to the reliefs sought in paragraph 30 of the petition filed on the 29/03/2019,” the tribunal held.

Not satisfied by this decision, Araraume and his party had approached the appellate court to upturn the decision of the tribunal on the grounds that the lower court erred in law, when it arrived at the decision that the case of the petitioners lacked merit and accordingly dismissed it.

The appeal, which is predicated on 22-ground was filed on behalf of the appellants by their lawyer, Awa Kalu, SAN and is challenging the entire decision of the tribunal.

In ground one of the appeal, Ararume and his party submitted that the tribunal was misdirected in law when they held in reference to the PW1 that “he did not state his professional skill and how long he has practiced...”.

According to the appellants, the tribunal in this case failed and neglected to consider the qualifications of the witness, which were contained in his witness statement on oath, which he adopted in the course of trial as his evidence in chief.

They submitted that the summary rejection of the analysis of the witness led to a miscarriage of justice having regards to the fact that PW1 teaches at a tertiary level and there was no competing or opposing analysis. “An analysis based on Form EC8D, which was not disowned by the 1st respondent (INEC) cannot be ignored”, they said.

They also argued in ground two that the tribunal erred in law when it concluded that Forms EC8A, EC8B, EC8C, and EC8D, which were tendered from the bar by the appellants’ lawyer during the examination-in-chief of PW4 are inadmissible, having not been tendered by the maker.

According to them, the tribunal failed to consider that the said documents are public documents which are carbon copies of the original and as such can be tendered from the bar upon mere production.