{"id":63678,"date":"2025-04-02T13:57:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T13:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=63678"},"modified":"2025-04-02T13:57:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T13:57:53","slug":"tribunal-dismisses-petition-against-governor-okpebholo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/04\/02\/tribunal-dismisses-petition-against-governor-okpebholo\/","title":{"rendered":"Tribunal Dismisses Petition Against Governor Okpebholo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Njoku Chijioke<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja has dismissed a petition challenging the election of Governor Monday Okpebholo, ruling it as lacking merit and frivolous.<\/p>\n<p>The petition, filed by the Action Alliance and Adekunle Rufai Omoaje, alleged that the September 21, 2024, election was tainted by corrupt practices and violations of the Electoral Act.<\/p>\n<p>The petitioners also claimed that the Action Alliance was unlawfully prevented from fielding a candidate due to issues with the party\u2019s nomination form.<\/p>\n<p>However, the tribunal ruled on Wednesday that Omoaje had no legal standing to contest the election outcome, as he was not a participant in the process.<\/p>\n<p>It further held that his allegations were baseless and did not meet the requirements of the Electoral Act 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Governor Okpebholo, who was declared the winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), with 291,667 votes, defeated his closest rival, Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who secured 247,655 votes.<\/p>\n<p>The tribunal\u2019s decision is a major victory for Okpebholo and the All Progressives Congress (APC), reinforcing the integrity of the electoral process and the rule of law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Njoku Chijioke The Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja has dismissed a petition challenging the election of Governor Monday Okpebholo, ruling it as lacking merit and frivolous. The petition, filed by the Action Alliance and Adekunle Rufai Omoaje, alleged that the September 21, 2024, election was tainted by corrupt practices and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":63679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-63678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63680,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63678\/revisions\/63680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}