The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue State and its candidate in the 2023 governorship election, Titus Tyoapine Uba, have appealed the judgment of the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in the state, which upheld the election of Governor Hyacinth Alia.
The tribunal, headed by Justice Ibrahim Mohammed Karaye on September 24, 2023, dismissed the petition by the PDP and Uba challenging the return by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Governor Alia as the winner of the 2023 gubernatorial election in the state.
Justice Karaye, who delivered the lead judgment, said the issues raised by the petitioners were pre-election issues and ought to have been entertained by the Federal High Court and not the tribunal.
The PDP state Publicity Secretary, Mr. Bemgba Iortyom, disclosed in Makurdi that the party, through its team of lawyers, is before the Court of Appeal challenging the judgment on 16 grounds notably among which is the tribunal’s error in law on the issue of its jurisdiction to entertain both petitions.
He said: “Our great party and its candidate fault the decision of the tribunal which held to the effect that the ground of the petition was that of pre-election, despite clear and unambiguous statutory provisions and pronouncements of higher courts of record on the matter to the contrary.”
Iortyom said 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 in the election on the account that his name was not submitted to INEC along with that of Alia for the election as expressly required by the law.
He added that PDP and Uba reiterate faith in the judiciary and remain optimistic that the appellate court will set aside the judgment of the tribunal and deliver substantive justice to their petition in line with the hopes of the people that the judiciary will always be their last hope.
According to Iortyom, “By sustaining the challenge to the outcome of the 2023 governorship election in Benue State, the party believes that it is deepening the culture of democracy and sanitising the process of leadership recruitment which alone 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 government’s sole 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.”
