The Kaduna State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal on Thursday dismissed the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the 2023 election, Isah Ashiru against the victory of Senator Uba Sani of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who has been the state governor since 29th May.
In a dissenting judgement of two against one, the panel, headed by Justice Victor Oviawie, dismissed the petition on the ground that the pre-hearing notice was filed out of time and therefore deemed to be abandoned.
The tribunal chairman and another member held that the appeal brought by PDP and Ashiru against the dismissal of their petition at the preliminary stage by the first and second defendants was not meritorious because the filing of the pre-hearing notice was abandoned and out of time, and therefore had dealt the entire petition a fatal blow.
However, the tribunal noted that if the petition had not been dismissed for lack of merit, it would have ordered a supplementary election in 22 polling units within 90 days in the substantive judgement.
PDP and Ashiru are challenging Uba’s declaration as the winner of the 18th March governorship election.
Sani polled 730,001 votes as against Ashiru’s 719, 196 votes.
The Labour Party candidate, Jonathan Asake came a distant third with 58,283 votes, while Suleiman Hunkuyi of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 21,405 votes.
While the Labour Party and NNPP accepted the outcome of the election, the PDP and its candidate rejected the results, alleging that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the wrong candidate winner of the election.
PDP and Ashiru alleged that there were massive irregularities and manipulation of results in Uba’s favour in some local government areas by INEC. According to them, the APC candidate did not score the highest number of valid votes cast in the election and ought not to have been returned winner of the election by INEC.
At the last sitting of the tribunal on 3rd September, all the parties to the dispute presented their final written addresses, with APC’s legal team, led by a former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo (SAN), arguing that the petitioners had helped in proving he won the election free and fair, pointing in particular to the admission of a star witness for the petitioner, Bonett Gwazah, a senior system analyst in the VR/ICT department of INEC in Kaduna State.
Source: Channels Television
