It was indeed an unexpected news that the Appeal Court in Makurdi division of Benue State, on Saturday nullified the election of former Senate President David Mark on the grounds that he was declared winner before the conclusion of collation of results in parts of the senatorial district.
Mark was declared winner of the Benue South senatorial election for the fifth time by the returning officer of the district, Prof. Latif Tiamiya on behalf of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the March 28 polls, in which his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) also won in all the four House of Representatives’ seats contested in the zone.
Shortly after his victory, however, Mark was dragged before the National/State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal by his major challenger, the All Progressives Congress (APC’s) Daniel Onjeh who cried foul over alleged subversion of the outcome of the election in the district.
Onjeh claimed that he polled the majority of votes validly cast and defeated Mark whose declaration as winner was based on false assumptions, adding that the election was marred by lots of irregularities such that the results declared were not in tune with the wishes of the people.
“In most of the places where the card readers functioned optimally, the votes were won by me. The window of opportunity given by INEC for manual accreditation via incident forms, where the card reader developed a fault, and extension of elections until the following day, was capitalised on by my opponent to rig the election, especially the figures for Agatu, with its large population of internally displaced persons, yet over 13, 000 voters were said to have been accredited and voted in the election.
“This ridiculously surpasses the number of voters recorded from other relatively stable local government areas. Even though they opted for manual accreditation, it was names of voters whose Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) were already hoarded that was used in filling the Incident Forms, and subsequently, carried out multiple thumb-printing of the ballot papers,” he stated partly in his petition.
The APC candidate had, therefore, demanded from the INEC that the records of all accreditation by card readers be preserved to enable his lawyers and agents have access to the machines used in all the polling units of the district for further action.
In his petition, Onjeh had further prayed the tribunal to nullify the election in over 700 polling units and order for a fresh one because the exercise, in his estimation, was marred with irregularities, such as over voting, harassment of voters, falsification, thuggery and non-compliance with electoral procedures, among others.
However, the chairman of the tribunal, Justice Mosunmola Dipeola, who ruled on October 7 in favour of Mark, noted that the petitioner failed in law to substantially prove that the election was marred by irregularities and was not conducted in compliance with the electoral act.
She had averred that the testimony of most of the petitioner’s witnesses were based on hearsay, which could not stand in the tripod of justice, and that none of those allegedly harassed were brought to testify before the court. “The petition failed, and accordingly, it is therefore dismissed,” Dipeola had said.
Dissatisfied with the outcome, Onjeh approached the appellate court, still based on the allegation that INEC declared Mark the winner of the election while collation of results were still ongoing in seven local government areas of the senatorial district, insisting that the tribunal refused to consider all his pleadings in the petition and did not make findings on the documents he tendered in evidence.
Consequent upon this, Justice Peter Olabisi Ige, in his judgement submitted that the appellant scaled the hurdles of all his pleadings, stating also that it was evident that the lower tribunal did not consider the issues raised by the petitioner but abridged his pleadings.
Ige contended that the lower tribunal erred in not making any findings in the evidence of PW 17 on the issue of collating results a day after Mark had been declared winner of the election, just as he cited various legal authorities to buttress the claim of the petitioner.
Based on the INEC debacle, the judge set aside the verdict of the lower tribunal, which earlier upheld the victory of the former Senate president, saying that the election failed to comply with the electoral act.
“Having failed to comply with the electoral act, I set aside the judgement of the lower tribunal and I order the INEC to, within 90 days, hold election in the zone,” Ige said.
In addition, the court held that none of the 10 witnesses brought forward by Mark could controvert the arguments of the petitioner, that the result of the election was not announced before the collation of all the results, especially from the affected seven local government areas.
Justice Ige maintained that the appellant proved his case beyond any reasonable doubt, even as oral evidence showed that collation of results were still ongoing in the said areas when the first respondent was declared winner of the election.
He ruled three issues out of the six formulated by the appellant for consideration in his favour and struck out one, while the two others were in favour of the respondent.
Supporters of the former Senate president had heaved a deep sigh of relief 48 hours after results of nine local governments of the district were announced by the INEC in favour of the PDP at its headquarters in Makurdi.
Prior to the release of the results, there was palpable tension among well wishers of Senator Mark, following unofficial reports and propaganda circulated on the social media that the APC was clearing the polls in the district, popularly referred to as Zone C.
But results turned in later showed that the PDP won in all the nine local governments, with a margin not quite wide as earlier expected by Mark’s campaigners who had predicted a landslide victory for their principal.
The reason for Mark’s slim win, in the estimation of political observers, was not far-fetched from the ‘change’ sweeping across the nation at the time, plus his personality as the country’s number three citizen.
The Idoma people held the office of the Senate president in high esteem and would rather want Mark to retain the office so that they would continue to remain in the mainstream of the nation’s polity in order to sustain their minority agitation for Apa state and other dividends of democracy, which had eluded them at the state level.
Besides, Mark himself was able to persuade the people to vote for him the fifth time because of the Federal University/Teaching Hospital, Otukpo, now demoted to College of Medicine under the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, which he attracted to the area. The people saw the educational and health project as a master stroke to queue behind him again.
Nevertheless, elders and youths of the APC from the senatorial district had rejected the victory of Mark at the polls.
Speaking on behalf of the group in Otukpo, Adoyi Ojogbane had said that though the presidential and parliamentary elections were won and lost, but that won’t deter them from registering their protest and the condemnation of coercion, inducement of electoral officials and falsification of election results in the district.
“People of the Benue South senatorial zone totally reject the election results as announced by the INEC. For instance, the refusal of the INEC officials, in connivance with the PDP government and agents to use the newly introduced functional card readers but to manually accredit voters in four local government councils resulted into the inflation of figures from the zone,” he had said.
Ojogbane, therefore, condemned in all ramifications, what he described as, “the shameful act of corrupting and inducement of the youths manning the various polling units. These youths are the leaders of tomorrow; hence, self-interest, greed and quest for power to corrupt their young minds, are setting bad precedence for the future generation.”
At the moment, mixed feelings have continued to trail the judgement as some Idoma people have alleged perceived political enmity at work to undo Senator Mark in order to perhaps install a person who would act according to their whims and caprices.