{"id":66473,"date":"2023-09-09T08:39:10","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T08:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=66473"},"modified":"2023-09-09T08:39:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T08:39:10","slug":"benue-north-east-senatorial-seat-tribunal-sacks-apcs-udende-returns-senator-suswam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=66473","title":{"rendered":"Benue North-East senatorial seat:\u00a0Tribunal sacks APC\u2019s Udende, returns Senator Suswam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">A former Governor of Benue State and senator, Gabriel Suswam of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been returned as the senator-elect for Benue North-East.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">The National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal sent Senator Emmanuel Udende of the All Progressives Congress (APC) packing, as the <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">Chairman of the three-man panel, Justice Ory Zik-Ikeorha and another member, ruled in the favour of Suswam and PDP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">In comments indicative of the plan of the APC candidate to appeal, his counsel, Innocent Daagba, expressed dissatisfaction with the judgment, and said he would advice his client to appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">The two members of the tribunal averred that Suswam and PDP fulfilled the requirement of the law in proving their case of irregularities such as mutilation, non-signing of documents, non-inclusion of lawful votes, among others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">But the third judge on the tribunal thought otherwise. In<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\"> a minority judgement, Justice Umar Mohammed, opposed the decision of the two other members of the panel, saying that the petitioner failed to proved his case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">Mohammed held that Suswam who called 19 witnesses most of who were irrelevant as the irregularities complained about were at the polling units and instead he called ward agents instead of polling unit agents.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">Justice Mohammed held that the evidence by Suswam was grossly insufficient to sustain his petition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">He, therefore, dismissed the petition and awarded the cost of N100,000 in favour of each of the respondents against the petitioner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Udende as the winner of the Benue North-East senatorial election held on February 25.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 19px;\">Suswam proceeded to the court, arguing that Udende did not score majority of the lawful votes cast in the 25th February, 2023 for the Benue North East Senatorial District election.<\/span><!--\/data\/user\/0\/com.samsung.android.app.notes\/files\/clipdata\/clipdata_bodytext_230909_093521_277.sdocx--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former Governor of Benue State and senator, Gabriel Suswam of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been returned as the senator-elect for Benue North-East. The National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal sent Senator Emmanuel Udende of the All Progressives Congress (APC) packing, as the Chairman of the three-man panel, Justice Ory Zik-Ikeorha and another member, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":56035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7,8],"tags":[492,930,6185],"class_list":["post-66473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","category-news","category-politics","tag-sack","tag-suswam","tag-udende"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}