Tribunal Sacks PDP Reps Member

A member of the House of Representatives in Enugu State, Simon Atigwe, has been sacked.

The lawmaker was sacked by the National Election Petition Tribunal in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, in a ruling on Wednesday.

Before his sacking, Mr Atigwe was elected under the platform of Peoples Democratic Partt PDP to represents the state Igbo-Eze North/Udenu Federal Constituency.

The tribunal headed by Justice H. N. Kunaza also declared the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Dennis Agbo, winner of a rerun election held in February.

Mr Agbo of the LP was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the 25 February 2023 National Assembly Election in the constituency.

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However, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the election, Oby Ajih, challenged the outcome of the election at the Court of Appeal in Lagos State.

Mrs Ajih argued that the election did not follow the right process as the logo of her party was not in the INEC’s EC8A form for the exercise.

In November 2023, the court voided the election and ordered a re-run election in the constituency within 90 days.

In the re-run held on 3 February this year, Mr Atigwe of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was declared winner of the exercise.

INEC said the PDP candidate polled 23,863 votes to defeat his closest rival, Mr Agbo of the Labour Party, who scored 2,3226 votes.

He was subsequently sworn in later the same month.

But Mr Agbo proceeded to the tribunal to challenge Mr Atigwe’s declaration.

The former banker argued that the rerun election was marred by the wrong computation of results and substantial non-compliance to the Electoral Law 2022, among others.

Delivering judgement on Wednesday, the tribunal held that Mr Agbo’s petition had merit and consequently declared him the actual winner of the re-run election for the constituency.

Mr Kunaza’s panel ruled that Mr Atigwe was not duly elected by the valid votes cast as the petitioner (Agbo) won with 23,221 and PDP 21,863 votes.

It ordered INEC to withdraw the certificate of return issued to Mr Atigwe and issue it to Mr Agbo.