Simon Atigwe, the representative for the Igboeze North/Udenu Federal Constituency of Enugu State was on Wednesday sacked by the House of Representatives Election Petitions Tribunal.
The tribunal also declared Dennis Nnamdi Agbo of the Labour Party as the rightful winner of the rerun election for the constituency held on February 3, 2024.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had earlier declared Atigwe of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as the winner of the rerun election.
The electoral umpire had stated that Atigwe received 23,863 votes, surpassing Agbo, who reportedly got 23,226 votes.
However, Agbo, who had initially won the election on February 25, 2023, but was later ousted by the appellate court, sought redress at the tribunal to contest Atigwe’s declaration on the basis of erroneous result calculations and significant violations of the electoral act, among other issues.
In its ruling on Wednesday, August 14, the Justice H. N. Kunaza-led upheld Agbo’s petition and declared him as the legitimate winner of the election.
The tribunal nullified the extra 2,000 votes attributed to the Atigwe and reinstated the votes from the February 25, 2023 election, which were 14,229 for the PDP and 28,870 for Agbo.
Furthermore, it determined that Atigwe was not duly elected based on the valid votes cast, as Agbo received 23,221 votes compared to the PDP’s 21,863 votes and, therefore, revoked the certificate of return issued to Atigwe, ordering that it should reissued to Agbo.
