The Supreme Court has affirmed Ayo Fayose as the duly elected governor of Ekiti State.
The court gave the ruling on Tuesday in Abuja.
In the unanimous decision by the seven-man panel led by Justice John Fabiyi, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier decisions of the Court of Appeal and the Ekiti State Governorship Election Tribunal, which had both ruled earlier that the petition challenging Fayose’s victory lacked merit.
In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, the apex court dismissed all the grounds of appeal filed by the petitioner – the All Progressives Congress – and resolved all four issues arising from the appeal against Fayose’s victory.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared that Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, polled 203,090 votes to defeat the then incumbent governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who attracted 120,433 votes in the June 2014 election.
Dissatisfied with the results declared by the INEC, the APC had filed a petition, urging the Ekiti State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which sat in Abuja to nullify the election.
But following the rulings of the Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, the party proceeded to the apex court seeking a determination whether Fayose was still qualified to stand for election despite his indictment by a panel and whether by virtue of the alleged partiality of the military in the 2014 election, the outcome should still be valid.
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