Appeal Court Affirms Ortom’s Election As Benue Governor

The victory of Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom in the March 9 governorship election was on Thursday reaffirmed by the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja.

The appellate court in a unanimous judgement, dismissed the appeal filed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its candidate in the poll, Emmanuel Jime for lacking in merit.

The judgment also resolved all the issues against the appellants.

Meanwhile, the appellate court awarded the sum of N150,000 fine against the APC candidate.

Ortom contested for re-election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after defecting from the APC in 2018.

The Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Makurdi, the Benue State capital had also on the 7 October, reaffirmed the re-election of the governor. Jime’s petition was also dismissed for lacking in merit.

Ortom polled a total of 434,473 votes to beat Jime who got 345,155 votes.

The election was declared inconclusive on March 11 due to the gap between the cancelled votes of 121,019 as against the winning margin between the PDP and APC which is 81,554.

Before the supplementary election, Ortom had scored 410,576 votes and had a lead of 81,554 votes over Jime who had scored 329,022 votes.

The supplementary election was held in 204 polling units in 22 local governments, which had a total of 121,299 registered voters.