A Labour Party candidate for the Edo State House of Assembly elections has petitioned the state election petition tribunal detailing how the last 2023 constituency election was allegedly rigged to deprive him of victory.
Derrick Uhunmwago said in his petition that he won the Egor State Constituency seat convincingly at the end of the first round of the election, but it was unjustifiably declared inconclusive to create room for rigging.
“The petitioners (Labour Party and Mr Uhumwago) state that election was successfully conducted in all the wards and units on 18/3/2023 and at the end of the said election, the petitioners had won convincingly,” his lawyers, including Stanley Imhanruor, stated in the petition filed at the election tribunal on 5 May.
Media reports have said 10 out of the 14 election petitions filed in the state relate to the 24-member Edo State House of Assembly.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Osawaru Irobosa of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner after the main election held on 18 March and the supplementary poll held on 15 April.
Mr Irobosa, according to INEC results, received 12,436 votes, while the Labour Party’s Mr Uhumwago, coming closest as the first runner-up, got 11,245 votes. The other nine candidates who participated in the election got tiny fractions of the total votes cast.
But Mr Uhumwago said he had won the election and the supplementary poll was baseless, urging the tribunal in Benin, the state capital, to declare him the winner and be issued the certificate of return.
He said he had received 10,990 votes while the PDP candidate had polled 5,578 at the end of the 18 March election, only for INEC to declare the election inconclusive shockingly.
He said INEC’s reason for declaring the election inconclusive was that “the election had not been validly and successfully conducted in Ward 4.”
He described INEC’s claim as false, maintaining that the “election was duly conducted in the said ward and the unit results given to the petitioners’ agents at the Polling Units.”
“These results were duly certified by the 1st Respondent (INEC) upon the application of the 1st petitioner. The certified true copies of the Units’ results in Ward 4 shall be relied upon at the trial of this Petition,” the petitioners’ lawyers wrote.
Mr Uhumwago and his party also said they would bring to the tribunal a video clip showing how the local government collation allegedly flip-flopped by first saying the result of Ward 4 was unavailable and then announcing that the result from the ward was cancelled for now.
“The returning officer failed to follow the prescribed procedure where results are not submitted in good time,” the petitioners said. “In particular, where hardcopy of collated results from the immediate lower level does not exist, the collation officer ought to regenerate the results from the polling Units by either relying on IREV or the duplicate copies issued to the parties’ agents.”
‘Why ward collation officer was absent’
The petitioners indicated that the collation officer for Ward 4 was absent from the state assembly collation centre and provided what they considered to be the reasons for it.
They cited a report of the ward collation officer for Ward 4 of Egor State Constituency, Sunday Igbinosa, confirming that there were disturbances and an attempt to snatch the result sheet, Form EC8B (1).
The report, according to the petitioners, however, said the officer was able to conclude the collation after normalcy returned.
It said further that the officer also noticed disturbances at the state assembly collation centre, as a result of which, he said he had to escape from the centre without making any presentation of his results.
‘We won’
The petitioners insisted they won the election, faulting the decision of the state assembly collation officer, Faith Efosa Oviasogie, a professor, to cancel the result of the entire ward.
They said instead of cancelling the result from the ward; she ought to wait for the ward collation officer to return or generate the result “through different means as prescribed by the relevant statute.”
They said the result of the ward “certified” by INEC showed that the Labour Party scored a total valid vote of 497 votes, whilst the PDP candidate scored 1410 votes.
Insisting that declaring the election inconclusive was baseless, they urged the tribunal to add the votes from Ward 4 on Form EC8B (I) (ward election result sheet) dated 18 March to the votes of the parties in the EC8C (I) of 18 March.
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This, they said, would give Labour Party 11 487 and PDP 6,988 and make them the winner of the election.
The INEC, PDP and its candidate for the election sued as respondents to the petition are expected to file their defence before the hearing begins.
