Tribunal Sacks Taraba Assembly Speaker

Abel Peter Diah, the Speaker of the Taraba State House of Assembly, has been sacked by Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Jalingo, the state capital.

The Nation reports that the court also ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rip Diah, who is representing Mbamga constituency of Sadauna local government council in the State House of Assembly, off the Certificate of Return which he got as winner of the poll.

Festus Idepefo, who led the petitioner’s counsel, explained that the electoral body did not comply with the Electoral Act 2010 in nine of the 48 polling units of Bamga constituency.

The act stipulates that elections must start with voters accreditation.

While defending its case, the defense counsel challenged the conduct of election in six of the polling units where their opponent got majority of his votes, as not being credible.

The court ruled that the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) provides oral and documented evidences to support its allegations, but the Speaker on his part, was only able to present documentary evidences (without witnesses) to substantiate his claim.

This however, did not meet the burden of proof as obtainable in the Electoral Act, which left the APC candidate, Emmanuel Bongo, as winner of the poll as declared by Justice AM Ali, who read the judgment on behalf of the tribunal.

The Speaker had been declared winner and Bongo as runner up by INEC, having amassed a total 8,272 and 6,691 votes respectively, but this decision was upturned by the tribunal.

The new judgment now is that the APC candidate polled 6,695 votes while the PDP candidate (Speaker) scored only 5,651 votes.

But the tribunal declared the election as ‘inconclusive’ and has ordered INEC to conduct a rerun in eight polling units of Mbamga constituency in 90 days, because the difference in votes between Bongo and Diah is not up to the number of voters disenfranchised in the affected areas.

Meanwhile, Ikuinyi-Owaji Ibani, the speaker of the Rivers state House of Assembly has said the election petition tribunal did not sack him from office.

Speaking yesterday, October 27, at the Assembly complex in Port Harcourt, he explained that the tribunal only nullified the election that brought him into office and not that he had been sacked.