KANO POLITICS – The Court of Appeal in Abuja has set a date for the judgment in Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf‘s appeal against his removal by the Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in Kano State. The judgment is scheduled for Friday.
On September 20, 2023, a three-man panel of judges, led by Justice Oluyemi Akintan Osadebay, declared 165,663 of Yusuf’s votes invalid because they lacked the signature or stamp of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). This led to a reduction in the governor’s vote count to 853,939, while Nasiru Ganuwa’s 890,705 votes remained unchanged.
Naija News has learned that the governor rejected the tribunal’s verdict, calling it “unfair” and “a miscarriage of justice,” and decided to appeal the decision.
In the court proceedings, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria representing the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) candidate, Wole Olanipekun, requested that the tribunal’s decision be overturned.
He objected to the tribunal’s decision to invalidate the election because of unsigned ballot papers, arguing that this had never happened before.
Olanipekun also claimed that the tribunal made an error by permitting a political party to submit a petition without including its candidate as a party. However, Akin Olujimi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria representing the APC, disagreed with Olanipekun’s arguments. He referred to the Appeal Court’s decision that unsigned ballots are considered electoral malpractice.
Olujimi argued that INEC regulations specify the actions that presiding officers must take during voting, including signing and dating the back of ballot papers.
