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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has affirmed Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as the duly elected Senator for Kogi Central Senatorial District.
The appellate court, in a judgement delivered on Tuesday, upheld the judgement of the Kogi State National/State Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal, which pronounced Akpoti-Uduaghan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the rightful winner of the February 25 National Assembly election as against Abubakar Sadiku-Ohere of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Recall that Akpoti-Uduaghan had contested the declaration of Sadiku-Ohere as winner of the election by INEC on the grounds that the electoral commission failed to input election results from Ajaokuta, Adavi and Okehi Local Government Areas in the senatorial district, whose votes gave her the winning margin above Sadiku-Ohere.
The rejected and excluded results were added to the overall results by the tribunal, which subsequently declared that the PDP candidate won the majority of lawful votes cast in the election.
Dissatisfied with the verdict of the tribunal, Sadiku-Ohere approached the Court of Appeal.
But a three-man panel of justices, led by Justice Hamma Barka dismissed Sadiku-Ohere’s appeal for lacking in merit.
According to the appellate court, Sadiku-Ohere failed to provide convincing evidence why the judgement of the tribunal should be set aside.
The court subsequently held that Akpoti-Uduaghan, having won the majority of lawful votes cast at the poll, is winner of the Kogi Central Senatorial District election.
Rejecting the APC candidate’s appeal, the Court of Appeal held that INEC, which has the duty of conducting and collating election results, failed to expalain why the results of the election in the affected local government areas were rejected and excluded from the overall results.