Tribunal affirms Obaseki as Edo governor

The Edo governorship election petitions tribunal sitting in Benin, has affirmed the victory of Godwin Obaseki in the September 19, 2020 governorship poll in the state.

The Yunusa Musa-led three-member tribunal, on Monday, dismissed all the petitions brought before it, which challenged Obaseki’s victory.

Five political parties had filed petitions seeking a nullification of the declaration of Obaseki as winner of the election.

Some of the petitions focused on the first degree certificate submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by the governor, while the Action Alliance and the Action Peoples Party said they were unlawfully excluded from the poll.

But in a unanimous judgment, the tribunal threw out all the petitions for lack of merit, adding that the petitioners failed to substantiate their claims.

“The petitioners have a duty to prove their allegations beyond reasonable doubts. There is no evidence of testimony that establishes the certificate is forged. The witnesses called never visited the school to confirm the genuineness of the certificate,” NAN quoted the tribunal to have said.

The tribunal, therefore, affirmed the result by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which declared Obaseki as the winner of the election.

It also awarded the sum of N200,000 each to INEC, Obaseki and Philip Shaibu, deputy governor of Edo, against the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), one of the petitioners.

Other petitioners are the Action Democratic Party and Agol Tracy, governorship candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party.

The development comes days after the court of appeal sitting in Abuja dismissed a certificate forgery suit against Obaseki.