The Supreme Court has affirmed Uba Sani of the All-Progressives Congress (APC) as the duly elected governor of Kaduna.
The appeal submitted by Mohammed Ashiru of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was unanimously rejected by a five-member panel of the top court as being lacking merit.
The Justice who read the lead judgement, Tijani Abubakar, stated that the appellant “has nothing useful to ask this court.”
In addition, he called the appeal “frivolous and vexatious” before dismissing it.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared that Sani defeated Ashiru, who received 719, 196 votes in the March 18 governorship election, with 730,001 votes.
However, the PDP and Ashiru, who were dissatisfied with the outcome, approached the electoral tribunal to challenge Sani’s win.
Two of the three justices on the tribunal panel rejected the petition in September 2023 on technical grounds.
The panel’s head, Victor Oviawie, declared the petition to be abandoned, pointing out that the PDP and its candidate had failed to submit their pre-hearing application by the legally required deadline.
The appellate court rejected Ashiru’s case and upheld Uba’s victory in the gubernatorial race in November 2023. A three-member panel of the appeal court ruled that the tribunal erred when it ordered the holding of supplemental polls in 22 polling units across four local government areas (LGAs) because the results of the exercise were considered inconclusive based on information that was not acceptable.
It claimed that a crucial witness that the PDP brought during the tribunal hearing only provided hearsay testimony, despite the fact that he was not there when the alleged malpractices occurred.
Therefore, the witness’s claims of vote-detraction, ballot-box stuffing, and the mutilation of critical election papers were dismissed by the court as hearsay.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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