The Supreme Court has affirmed the election of Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the governor of Edo State, upholding the decision of the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

A five-man panel led by Justice Mohammed Garba Lawal held that the appellants – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the September 2024 election, Asue Ighodalo – could not establish their claims of election non-compliance, unlawful votes, and that Okpebholo was not duly elected.

The appeal was dismissed for lacking merit.

Thursday’s verdict came about 11 months after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Okpebholo as the winner of the Edo governorship election.

The then-APC candidate got 291,667 votes, beating Ighodalo, his closest rival, who garnered 247,274 votes.

Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party (LP) took a distant third place, managing only 22,763 votes in the fiercely contested election.

However, unsatisfied with the conduct of the exercise, Ighodalo and the PDP took the matter to court, alleging that the election was fraught with irregularities. They asked the court to nullify the poll over allegations of non-compliance with the tenets of the Electoral Act 2022.

In April 2025, the election tribunal said the petitioners failed to prove the allegations against the respondents.

The PDP and Ighodalo took another step, going to the Court of Appeal to challenge that verdict.

Their petition was equally dismissed by a panel of the appellate court, which said their appeal lacked merit.