Nigeria’s experiment in elective governance can hardly survive by choosing to replace INEC’s arbitrariness with judicial imponderability. This is why the sitting of the Court on Tuesday matters. In 2008, the Supreme Court scorned the notion of deciding election disputes based on principles as “vague, nebulous and large.” On 18 February, it can correct that…
The essential facts in the Imo State governorship judgment are reasonably well known now but need recapping nevertheless. The state comprises 27 local government areas, 305 electoral wards and 3,523 polling units. In the 2019 governorship election, the Independent National Electoral Commission cancelled the results from 252 polling units because of violence, excluded results from another 388 units and announced outcomes on the basis of the collation of results from 2,883 polling units.
Hope Uzodinma claimed that he had scored 213,695 votes from the 388 polling units which were excluded, while Mr. Ihedioha, according to his results, scored only 1,903. His argument was that by adding these votes to his original score, he would have emerged winner. To establish his claim, Mr. Uzodinma presented his version of results through a deputy commissioner of Police, who was not employed by the INEC. The deputy commissioner claimed the results were those issued by INEC.
There were three issues that fell to be decided in this matter. The first was whether the evidence of the deputy commissioner of Police was admissible. The Supreme Court decided that it was. That is not dispositive, so should not detain us unduly.
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