- Safiu Kehinde
The Court of Appeal sitting in Calabar, has on Wednesday, upheld the three-year jail term of Peter Ogban, a professor convicted in 2021 for rigging a senatorial election in favour of Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
Ogban, a professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, had served as a returning officer in the 2019 general elections in Akwa Ibom North-West District.
He was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a State High Court in Uyo for announcing fake election results in two local government areas, Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo, in favour of Akpabio’s favour who had then just defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressive Congress (APC)
While Akpabio eventually lost the election before he contested again in 2023, Ogban had reportedly narrated to the trial court in Uyo how the election results were falsified to give the APC an unfair advantage over the PDP.
According to report, about 5,000 fake votes were added to the APC’s score in Oruk Anam in the 2019 election.
Following his sentence reaffirmation by the Appellate Court earlier today, a lawyer who was involved in the case told newsmen that apart from affirming Ogban’s conviction and three-year jail term, the court expressed it’s disappointment with his role as a university professor in the fraudulent manipulation of election results.