Titus Uba, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for governor in the most recent election in Benue State, and his party have appealed the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal’s decision upholding the election of Governor Hyacinth Alia.
On September 24, 2023, the Tribunal, presided over by Justice Ibrahim Mohammed Karaye, dismissed the PDP and Uba petition challenging the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) declaration of Governor Hyacinth Alia as the victor of the state’s 2023 gubernatorial election.
The petitioners’ concerns were pre-election problems, and the Federal High Court should have handled them instead of the Tribunal, according to Justice Karaye, who gave the lead judgement.
However, the PDP is currently appealing the decision before the Court of Appeal on sixteen reasons, including the Tribunal’s purported legal error regarding its authority to consider both petitions.
This was said in a statement by the party’s publicity secretary, Mr. Bemgba Iortyom.
Mr. Iortyom stated, “Our great party and her candidate blame the decision of the Tribunal which held, to the effect, that the ground of the petition was that of pre-election, despite plain and unequivocal statutory provisions and pronouncements of higher courts of record on the topic to the contrary.
“The party is confident that the petition was established before the Tribunal as the documentary depositions made by Governor Alia’s running mate, Samuel Ode, were forged and that he was not a candidate to the election on the account that his name was not submitted to INEC alongside that of Alia for the election as expressly required by law.
“PDP and Engr. Uba affirm their belief in the judiciary and their optimism that the appellate court would overturn the Tribunal’s decision and grant them real justice for their appeal, in keeping with the people’s belief that the judiciary will always be their final resort.
“By maintaining the challenge to the outcome of the governorship election in Benue State in 2023, the party believes it is deepening the culture of democracy and sanitising the leadership recruitment process, which by itself will ensure that its legacy of development in the state is kept alive and improved upon by the right choice of leaders.
“We insist that a government’s only claim to legitimacy lies in its emergence through the due process prescribed and regulated by the rule of law, outside of which no one, no matter his assumptions of populism and self-righteousness, may lay his hands on the sacred mandate of the people,”
