• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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What the numbers say about Supreme Court’s sacking of Imo’s Ihedioha

Emeka Ihedioha

Nigeria’s highest court, the Supreme Court, Tuesday upturned the election of Emeka Ihedioha as governor of Imo State and declared Hope Uzodinma, who initially came fourth at the March 9, 2019 polls, as winner.

The apex court said Ihedioha of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) did not score majority of the lawful votes in the governorship election.

In a landmark judgment delivered by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the apex court agreed that results in 388 polling units were unlawfully excluded during the collation of the final governorship election result in Imo.

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In upholding Uzodinma’s appeal, the Supreme Court agreed that 236,600 votes in his favour were omitted in the 388 polling units.

When added to his initial result of 96,458, it gives a total of 333,058, helping Uzodinma leapfrog Ihedioha (with 283,404 votes), Uche Nwosu (with 190,364 votes) and Ifeanyi Araraume (with 114,676 votes) and go from fourth to first.

However, when the results tendered by Uzodinma, which the Supreme Court upheld, are accounted for, total votes at the election go up to 950,926 which is the sum of 236,600 and the 714,326 votes recorded by INEC.

What that then means is that the number of votes is also higher than the number of accredited voters which INEC data puts at 823,743.