The Supreme Court has officially confirmed Monday Okpebholo as the rightful Governor of Edo State.

A group of five judges led by Justice Mohammed Garba said that the case brought by Asue Ighodalo, who wanted the election cancelled, did not have enough legal backing.

The court said it had no reason to cancel the earlier decisions made by the Court of Appeal and the Election Tribunal. These courts had both agreed that Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won fairly.

According to the judges, Ighodalo couldn’t show strong or acceptable proof that the election had serious problems like over-voting or failure to follow the rules of the Electoral Act.

They also pointed out that Ighodalo didn’t bring the right witnesses to explain some of the materials he submitted, including data from the BVAS machines used during voting.

The court added that many of the documents were simply submitted without clearly showing that rules were broken in the 432 polling units mentioned. Edo State has a total of 4,519 polling units.

INEC, Nigeria’s electoral body, had announced Okpebholo as the winner of the election held on Saturday, September 21, 2025. This was officially made public on September 24.

The Returning Officer, Professor Faruk Kuta, said that Okpebholo scored 291,667 votes. PDP’s Asue Ighodalo came second with 247,274 votes, while Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party finished third with 22,763 votes. Fourteen other candidates also ran for governor but received fewer votes.

Despite Ighodalo’s claim that the election was full of irregularities, the court has now put the matter to rest by confirming Okpebholo as the duly elected governor.