Senator Steven Odey, Joe Agi (SAN) and Agom Jarigbe have approached the Appeal Court to challenge the election tribunal judgment which affirmed Odey as the winner of the December 5, 2020 by-election for the Cross River North senatorial district.
Odey and Jarigbe are both of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), while Agi was the undisputed candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the by-election.
The tribunal judgment was delivered on June 18, 2021.
Despite the decision being in his favour, Odey contended that there were particulars of error in the judgment, relating to the allegation of submission of false information in aid of his qualification.
On his part, Jarigbe asked the appellate court “to determine who was the rightful candidate of the PDP in the by-election.”
He also asked that he should be declared duly nominated and sponsored in the by-election as well as a declaration that the certificate of return issued Odey is a nullity.
Agi on his part gave 10 grounds for challenging the tribunal’s judgment.
He averred, among others, that the tribunal “wrongly held that the grounds of the petition were pre-election matter, without taking into cognizance the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in the following cases which were indeed brought to the attention of the Tribunal by the Appellants, Viz: PDP V. INEC (2014) 17 NWLR (Pt. 1437), FALEKE V. INEC (2016) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1543) and APC V. OHARISI (2019) LPELR – 48924 (CA).”
He further averred that that tribunal judges misdirected themselves in law when they held that “We did not find where the Court nullified the Certificate of Return to the 1st Respondent (Odey).”

By: Friday Nwagbara, Calabar