Jubilation In Enugu As Supreme Court Affirms Mbah As Gov

There is jubilation in the coal city of Enugu after the Supreme Court, Friday affirmed the victory of Peter Mbah as the elected governor of Enugu State in the March 18, 2023 gubernatorial election.

While delivering the judgement on Friday, the five-member panel of the apex court led by Justice Mohammed Garba, in a unanimous decision, held that a petition filed by the governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Chijioke Edeoga, failed to prove the allegations of substantial non-compliance with the electoral law against Mbah.

The court also dismissed allegation of NYSC certificate forgery which was one of the basis for which the LP and Edeoga wanted the court to disqualify Mbah.

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In arriving at the decision to upheld Mbah’s victory, the apex court said it found no reason to dislodge the concurrent verdicts of the State Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal in Lagos, which had upheld the victory of the governor, and therefore dismissed all the allegations the appellants raised.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had declared Mbah of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the gubernatorial election after he polled a total of 160,895 votes, with Edeoga coming second with 157,552 votes, while Frank Nweke of the All-Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, polled 17, 983 votes to place third.

Not satisfied with the results announced by INEC, Edeoga and his party filed a petition to challenge Mbah’s victory, insisting that he scored the highest number of valid votes at the election and therefore ought to have been declared winner instead of Mbah.

He also alleged that the PDP candidate was ineligible to contest the election in the first place as he had allegedly submitted a forged NYSC, certificate to the INEC.