Supreme Court Upholds Okpebholo’s Election as Edo State Governor

The Supreme Court of Nigeria on Thursday affirmed Senator Monday Okpebholo as the duly elected Governor of Edo State, dismissing the appeal filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its governorship candidate, Asue Ighodalo.

Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Lawal Garba, who headed a five-member panel of the apex court, held that the appellants failed to substantiate their allegations of over-voting, electoral malpractice, and non-compliance with the Electoral Act. The court ruled unanimously that Ighodalo did not receive the majority of valid votes cast during the September 2024 election.

According to the Supreme Court, the PDP and its candidate only challenged the results from 395 out of the 4,519 polling units, failing to prove widespread irregularities. Furthermore, the court noted that the testimonies of the 19 witnesses presented during the Tribunal proceedings did not support the claims of election fraud.

The apex court upheld the earlier decisions of both the Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which had previously dismissed Ighodalo’s petition. It concluded that the appellants failed to provide credible, admissible evidence to warrant overturning Okpebholo’s victory.

On May 29, 2025, the Court of Appeal had affirmed the Tribunal’s ruling, also declaring the PDP’s appeal unmeritorious. Likewise, on April 2, 2025, the Election Petition Tribunal chaired by Justice Wilfred Kpochi had dismissed the petition filed by the PDP and Ighodalo.

In their original petition (marked EPT/ED/GOV/02/2024), the PDP alleged that the election was riddled with irregularities, including over-voting, flawed collation, and non-serialization of ballot papers. They claimed these irregularities occurred in 765 polling units and urged the tribunal to annul the election.

As part of their evidence, the petitioners presented 154 BVAS machines from 133 polling units and called a total of 19 witnesses, including a Senior Technical Officer from INEC’s ICT department. However, the tribunal held that the BVAS devices were not properly demonstrated, and most witness testimonies amounted to hearsay.

Justice Kpochi emphasized that the petitioners failed to call crucial witnesses such as polling unit agents or presiding officers, and reiterated that documents alone cannot prove allegations of electoral misconduct. “The BVAS machines were merely presented but not linked to specific irregularities through proper witness testimony,” he noted.

The Tribunal concluded that the PDP failed to convincingly prove their claims of non-compliance with the Electoral Act or that Okpebholo did not score the highest number of lawful votes.

Justice Kpochi also dismissed the claim that the ballot papers lacked serial numbers, noting that the petitioners’ witnesses contradicted the physical evidence before the tribunal. Ultimately, the Tribunal upheld the election, having found that Okpebholo lawfully won with 291,667 votes, while Ighodalo came second with 247,655 votes.