Appeal Court affirms Bayelsa Governor Diri’s re-election

The Court of Appeal in Abuja affirmed on Thursday the re-election of Douye Diri as the Governor of Bayelsa State.

Mr Diri contested and won the 11 November 2023 governorship poll on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The three-member panel of justices led by James Abundaga held in a unanimous judgment that the appeal filed by the appellants – Timipre Sylva and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) – lacked merit.

The panel held that the tribunal was not in error when it struck out several paragraphs of the petitioner’s reply against the governor’s election.

Mr Abundaga said the Bayelsa State Governorship Election Tribunal, which sat in Abuja, was right to have struck out the appellants’ witnesses’ statements on oath.

The judge said it was an abuse of court process for a party to file several processes against the same judgement.

The judge added that the appellants failed to show that they tendered the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines before the tribunal as evidence to prove the allegations of electoral malpractice.

“The evidence of the appellants’ witnesses was hearsay and could not be relied upon by any reasonable tribunal, ” the court said.

The panel subsequently dismissed the appeal for being unmeritorious.

The court affirmed Mr Diri’s election.

It awarded a cost of N500,000 against Mr Sylva and his party, the APC.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that, on 27 May, the election tribunal dismissed the petition filed by Mr Sylva and the APC.

The three-member tribunal, led by Adekunle Adeleye, dismissed the petition for lacking merit.

In the unanimous decision, the tribunal held that the petitioners failed to adduce credible evidence to substantiate their allegations against the outcome of the state’s governorship poll.

It struck out all the additional proof of evidence and statements on oath of some of the witnesses who testified for the petitioners as incompetent.

According to the tribunal, the law expressly provided that an election petition must be filed not later than 21 days after the decoration of the election result.

(NAN)