The Court of Appeal in Abuja at the weekend dismissed the appeals filed by the Action Congress of Nigeria and its Kogi State governorship candidate, Abubakar Audu challenging the judgement of the Kogi State election tribunal upholding the election of Captain Idris Wada of the People Democratic Party as the state governor.

In a unanimous judgement, a full panel of the court headed by Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa held that Audu and his party could not substantiate their claims that the governor and his party did not score majority of the lawful votes needed to win the December 3, 2011 governorship election.

Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa in her lead judgement resolved all the issues raised by the appellants for the nullification of the election against them.

Audu and ACN who were the appellants raised seven issues.

The panel further stated that Audu merely dumped the documents serving as his exhibits on the tribunal without linking them with the alleged shortcomings of the polls.

Justice Bulkachuwa said: "It is the duty of the petitioner to lead evidence in support of the documents he submitted to court. It is not for the judge to go and start searching for what they substantiate in chambers.

"The tribunal was right to hold that the appellant merely dumped the documents on them."

On allegation that the election was marred by corrupt practices, the court held that Audu did not prove the allegations.

Justice Bulkachuwa also said that even where allegations of malpractices were established, the appellant must still prove that the malpractices substantially affected the result of the election. She held that the appellant failed to do this.

She further stated that: "The onus was on the Appellant to prove that the votes scored by Wada were unlawful but he failed to so do. Besides, the appellant ought to produce another set of results, having failed to do that; could not be heard to say that the results declared by INEC were unlawful."

The court further held that Audu’s principal witness’ testimony was unreliable as he could not prove to have the requisite experience and expertise to prove over-voting that the appellants alleged.

The court noted that Audu had promised to call expert in forensic but failed to do so.

Quoting her, "The witness was not in Kogi on the day of the election. He did not carry out a geometric analysis of the ballot papers. His testimony is inchoate and amount to hearsay. The integrity of the evidence is doubtful. His evidence is inadmissible.

"The tribunal did not need the evidence of a data researcher to determine who scored majority of the votes.

"The tribunal was right to have rejected the evidence of the appellant's witness."

The court further held that another witness called by Audu, an INEC staff testified that the election was free and fair.

The court also found as a fact that the witness contradicted all the evidence given by the other appellant's witness.

"This is in admission against interest," Justice Bulkachuwa said.

The court further held that the tribunal rightly evaluated the evidence and held that the appellant failed to prove the allegations in his petition.

While affirming the decision of the tribunal, the Court of Appeal held that the tribunal's judgment was not against of the weight of evidence.