The Plateau State governorship election petition tribunal has delivered its verdict, affirming Caleb Mutfwang as the duly elected governor of the state. The judgment, which was delivered on Friday morning after about two hours of proceedings, upheld the results of the March 18 governorship election.
A three-member panel of the tribunal, led by Justice Sunday O, dismissed the petition filed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Nentawe Yiltwatda.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had previously declared Caleb Mutfwang of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of the election with 525,299 votes, defeating 17 other candidates, including Yiltwatda, who polled 481,370 votes.
Yiltwatda and the APC had approached the tribunal seeking to disqualify Mutfwang and declare themselves as the winners of the election. They claimed to have polled the highest valid votes cast and alleged that Mutfwang was not validly nominated by his party due to a lack of structure.
Furthermore, the petitioners challenged the victory of the PDP governor, citing alleged over-voting in the scores recorded for him by INEC.
However, in delivering the judgment, the tribunal ruled that Yiltwatda and his party had failed to prove their case. The tribunal held that the PDP had conducted a repeat Congress in 2021 and thus had a solid party structure to nominate candidates for elections.
Additionally, the tribunal rejected the claims of Yiltwatda and the APC that BVAS (Biometric Voter Authentication System) was not used, noting that the total number of votes cast matched the number of registered voters, confirming that there was no over-voting.
The tribunal also addressed the witnesses presented by the petitioners, stating that one witness admitted she was a polling unit agent but acknowledged under cross-examination that the signature on the polling unit result was not hers. As a result, her evidence was expunged.
In another instance, a witness admitted that BVAS was not used but affirmed that the total number of votes cast matched the number of registered voters. Consequently, the tribunal ruled that there was no over-voting.
It’s worth noting that this verdict follows the earlier dismissal of a petition filed by the NNPP candidate against the election of Caleb Mutfwang for lack of merit.
