Consolidation in Delta

ASABA- DRAWING  analogy from the Governorship Election Petition Tribunals at Akwa Ibom and Rivers States, which quashed the elections of Governors Udom Emmanuel and Nyesom Wike, the All Progressives Congress, APC and Labour Party, LP, governorship candidates in Delta State in the April 11, 2014 governorship election, Olorogun O’tega Emerhor and Chief Great Ogboru may have  anticipated Delta State to follow the bandwagon last Monday.  
However, this was not to be, as the three-man Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in the state, chaired by Justice Nasiru Gunmi, darted their expectations. It did not invalidate result in a single local government, not to talk of ordering a re-run.
The tribunal not only sustained the election of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the election, it dismissed their petitions with ignominy.
Starting with the petition by Ogboru and his party, the tribunal held that the petitioners were under obligation to prove their claims that the election of Senator Okowa as governor did not substantially comply with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2010 as amended, but contrarily, they abandoned the roadway and pursued shadow during the proceedings.
TELLTALE signs: As far as
the tribunal was concerned, Ogboru and Labour Party woefully failed to prove their assertions of ballot stuffing and other electoral malpractices. As if saying the petitioners came to waste the time of the tribunal given that their witnesses appallingly contradicted, themselves in their testimonies, the tribunal awarded N50, 000 costs against each of the petitioners.
Justice Gunmi gave clue of the tribunal’s displeasure with the demeanour of the petitioners’ witnesses when Mr. Turner Ogboru, a younger brother to Ogboru, appeared before it earlier on September 16. He commented that the way he answered questions by lawyers to respondents might be injurious to the case of the petitioners.
He said, “Don’t stretch our patience, maybe  we have to take an adjournment and ask your counsel to advice you on how to behave. You are a witness in this matter, whatever relationship you have with counsels does not count here, and you should answer the questions directly, so please help us. I want you to know that the evidence you give will determine your case, if you do not comport yourself, I do not know how you are helping in this matter.”
Flawed theory: The conclusion of the tribunal, especially in the Emerhor/APC case against Okowa, was that the petitioners incorrectly thought that with the verdict of the Rivers tribunal to the effect that INEC compromised the election in the state with the use of incident forms, rather than adherence to card reader, would automatically ricochet in Delta.
Shoddy preparation
Though the tribunal overrode the preliminary objections of the respondents that Emerhor was not competent to bring the action and lacked locus standi, it said the uncorroborated malfunction of the card reader, a complement to the accreditation process at some polling units did not invalid Okowa’s election.
What dumbfounded the tribunal the more and which counted greatly in favour of Okowa, was the seemingly clumsy manner the petitioners went about the case. Indeed, this was the decisive factor for the governor.
As the panel said, “The petition is unusual for a gubernatorial electoral petition; it contains only 17 paragraphs, on seven pages of A4 paper. There are 25 local government areas in Delta state and by virtue of polling units…, there are at least, 3,329 polling units in Delta state. One would have thought that there would have been pleadings on what transpired in the polling units but this was not the case.”


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