Leadership Newspaper
By George Agba
The Court of Appeal in Abuja, yesterday dismissed an appeal filed by the governorship candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in Nasarawa State, Solomon Ewuga, challenging the judgement of the Election Petitions Tribunal which upheld the election of Governor Aliyu Akwe Doma in the April 2007 gubernatorial poll.
In a unanimous decision, five justices of the appellate court held that Ewuga’s appeal lacked merit because he failed to produce enough evidence to prove his claims that the election was not conducted properly in some of the polling stations.
Justice Mary Peter –Odili who read the lead judgement said the appellant (Ewuga) focused mainly on the wards instead of proving his main allegation which bordered on the polling stations. The judge held that the appellant failed to prove his allegation of over-voting and over thumb –printing.
She said the appellant’s complaint that INEC conducted the poll manually as against using electronic voting machines was not an issue because there is no known law that says election cannot be done manually.
"The attitude of the courts nowadays is to move away from technicalities and do substantial justice. A court of law is bound to substantial justice without regards to technicalities," the judge submitted.
She said there was no basis for revisiting the case as handled by the tribunal, or call for retrial as the appellant failed in its totality to prove his case.
She dismissed the case on the ground that it lacked merit and awarded N30,000 cost of litigation to Governor Doma and the Peoples Democratic party (PDP), as well as N30,000 to the Independent National Electoral Commission.