Ihedioha Vs. Uzodinma: All set for Tuesday’s S’Court review on Imo State
All is set for a rare history at the nation’s Supreme Court as it has fixed tomorrow, Tuesday, February 18 for hearing in the fresh application by erstwhile governor of Imo State, Chief Emeka Ihedioha challenging the judgement earlier delivered on January 14, 2020.
Recall that a seven-member justices had the said date, unanimously ruled that CHief Hope Uzodinma, who is of the APC, proved the allegation of unlawful exclusion of results in 388 polling units of the state where he scored 213,695 votes.
The Supreme Court justices had relied on a strange result containing 388 polling Units which INEC has cancelled and never endorsed to sack Ihedioha.
Anger was further fuelled in Imo State when some of the results of the 388 polling units leaked to the media after the judgment showing serious errors and questionable computations and collation.
Also, the leaked results did not record votes of other political parties that took part in the guber election but only inflated APC votes in some units to over the total number of registered voters and paltry votes to the PDP.
The lead judgment read by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, held that the Court of Appeal was wrong to have ruled that the PW54, subpoenaed police deputy commissioner, who produced the documents of the results, was not the proper person to tender same as he was not at the polling units.
Ihedioha of the PDP had polled 273,404 votes for the election in 27 local government areas of the state; Action Alliance candidate, Uche Nwosu, polled 190,364 votes and APGA’s Ifeanyi Ararume polled 114,676 votes. With the addition of the excluded votes, Uzodinma’s votes now rose to 310,153.
It was not clear if the claims of one of the lawyers representing Governor Hope Uzodinma, Festus Jombo Esq that although he heard about the new date, the office has not been served the hearing notice was true.
But the Director of Information of the Supreme Court, Dr Akande confirmed the date for the hearing.
Trouble started after the January 14 judgment which had continued to generate endless demonstrations across the state and even in Abuja by PDP stalwarts even though the State Government had issued a warning banning any form of demonstration bordering on the apex court judgment.
Details of the matter revealed that embattled former Governor Ihedioha in the application dated February 5, 2020 and brought through his counsel and former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Kanu Agabi (SAN) is praying the apex court to set aside the judgement.
Besides, Ihedioha and PDP listed five grounds which they said the apex court erred in arriving at its decision to nullify the March 9, 2019 election and declare Uzodinmma winner of the election after he presented excluded results from 388 polling units.
The fresh application is brought under Section 6(6) of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 and Section 22 of the Supreme Court Act, 2004.
