The Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, has sacked the Speaker of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, Hon Kombowei Benson.
The appellate court’s judgment indicated that the April 2015 election that returned Benson as a member of the House was nullified on December 9, 2015.
But over 40 days after the court’s nullified Benson’s eletion, the Speaker has remained in office.
According to PUNCH, last Thursday, the Speaker even chaired the House that received the Appropriation Bill for 2016 from the state government presented by Governor Seriake Dickson.
The Speaker was sacked in a case filed by Ebifaghe Orunimighe, the candidate of the APC for the House of Assembly seat in Southern Ijaw Constituency 4.
The APC candidate Oruminighe particularly said in his petition that there was no election in Olodiama Ward 3, Apoi Ward 15, Forupa Ward 14 and Ukubie Ward 16.
On October 16, 2015, the Election Petition Tribunal presided over by Justice Ononnaeze Madu dismissed Orunimighe’s petition for lack of proofs.
But justices Mohammed Garba, Ejembi Eko and Stephen Adah, who sat on the appeal panel that delivered the judgment set aside the decision of the tribunal and upheld the prayers of APC's Oruminighe.
In the judgment delivered by Justice Eko, the panel decided that the appellants proved with their evidence that there was no election in Appoi Ward, yet results were posted in result sheets that were earlier snatched and collated into the overall results of the constituency.
The panel, which also held that there was an inexplicable over voting, said, “The line of attack by the appellants under issue 2 is that upon proper evaluation of exhibit P vis-a-vis the total number of vote cast at the election put at 34,985 as announced by INEC, there was an inexplicable over voting."
No comments:
Post a Comment