THE Supreme Court has upheld the election of Alex Otti as duly elected governor of Abia State.
Justice Uwani Abba-Aji, while delivering the judgment, dismissed the appeal against the governor’s victory, saying the appeal by the PDP lacked merit.
PDP and its candidate, Chief Okey Ahiwe, and his APC counterpart, Chief Ikechi Emenike, had challenged the election of Otti of the Labour Party (LP).
It will be recalled that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, declared that Otti polled 175,466 votes to defeat his closest rival, Ahiwe of the PDP, who scored 88,529 votes in the gubernatorial poll that was held on March 18, 2023.
Dissatisfied with the outcome of the election, both Ahiwe and Emenike of the APC, who came in third, separately challenged it.
But in the judgement of October 6, last year, the state governorship election petitions tribunal dismissed the petitions and upheld Otti’s victory.
The tribunal’s judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeal in Lagos, which also dismissed appeals, as his now been upheld by the Supreme Court.
