The Supreme Court has ruled that the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Dauda Lawal was duly elected as the governor of Zamfara.
The top court struck out the ruling of the Court of Appeal Abuja, which had pronounced the Governorship Election as inconclusive and ordered a re-run in three Local Government Areas of the state.
The election of Lawal was declared void by the Court of Appeal in November.
The gubernatorial race on March 18 was proclaimed won by Lawal, as with a total of 377,726 votes, he pulled off a stunning win that ousted All Progressives Congress (APC) incumbent Bello Matawalle, who had a total of 311,976 votes.
The APC candidate, who is currently the Minister of State for Defence, claimed that INEC had manipulated the results of several ward areas in order to undermine his win in the election.
The Zamfara Election Petitions Tribunal determined that the case lacked merit in a previous decision on September 18. The panel fined the petitioners N500,000 while maintaining Lawal’s win.
As anticipated by observers, Matawalle challenged the lower court’s ruling before the Court of Appeal in Abuja.
At the appeal court, Judge Oyebisi Folayemi presided over a three-member bench that invalidated Governor Lawal’s declaration as the victor of the gubernatorial contest.
Judge Sybil Nwaka directed INEC to hold new elections in three local government areas of the state where there had not been any prior elections or where the results of different polling places had not been tallied.
However, in order to get justice, Lawal took the case to the supreme court
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