Edo guber: APP, AA parties drag Obaseki, INEC to tribunal

As the Edo State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Benin, the state capital ends today the collection of petitions from aggrieved political parties over the September 19 election in the state, two other parties have petitioned against the declaration of Godwin Obaseki of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as the winner of the poll.

The two political parties who filed their petitions dated October 5, are Action Peoples Party, (APP) and Action Alliance (AA). Both are contesting the outcome of the election on the ground of “unlawful exclusion”.

The petitions by the two political parties brought to three, the number of petitions before the tribunal. Earlier, the governorship candidate of the African Democratic Party (ADP), Iboi Lucky Emmanuel, had filled his petition within the week against Obaseki’s emergence as winner of the poll.

APP, in the petition in which Obaseki, the PDP and INEC were respondents, had claimed that he was unlawfully excluded. Similarly, the AA’s candidate, Ukonga Frank Onaivi, also claimed in his petition against Obaseki, PDP and INEC, that he was also excluded unlawfully, in spite of being the validly- nominated candidate of the party, in line with the Electoral Act.