The Chief Dan Orbih-led legacy group of the Edo State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has recorded another breakthorugh as a Federal High Court in Abuja declared the list of State House of Assembly and National Assembly candidates the group produced from its primary election as the validly nominated candidates.
The Court said the Orbih group was the authentic group to submit list of candidates for the state house of Assembly and the National Assembly elections to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
The Court specifically ordered the INEC to recognise only candidates that emerged from the primary election it monitored.
The entire gamut of these pronouncements was the verdict made by Justice Inyang Ekwo of Federal High Court 5, Abuja.
Justice Ekwo had struck out the preliminary objections raised by Governor Godwin Obaseki’s faction of the Party for lack of merit.
In the substantive matters, Justice Ekwo said that all evidences showed that the primary election held by Dan Orbih’s faction were duly monitored by INEC as organized by the PDP.
Justice Ekwo affirmed that the Obaseki’s faction had no documented evidence that their primary elections were monitored by INEC which was a vital aspect of the New Electoral Act, 2022.
He then made a declaration that INEC must only recognize the candidates produced from the primary election of PDP which the Commission monitored.
THE CONCLAVE reports that the implications of this is that the candidates of the Legacy PDP are and remain the authentic candidates for the 2023 general elections.
At the time of the judgment, the Obaseki Group had no valid judgment as the Federal High Court judgment in Benin had been struck out by the Appeal Court in Benin on the 23rd November, 2022.
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