TheCable

On Wednesday, the governorship election petition tribunal in Kano sacked Abba Yusuf, candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), as governor of the state.

In a judgment delivered on Wednesday via Zoom, the tribunal ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to withdraw the certificate of return issued to Yusuf.

The tribunal also affirmed Yusuf Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the duly elected governor of Kano.

Yusuf, who was backed by Rabiu Kwankwaso, NNPP’s presidential candidate and political godfather in the state, was declared the winner of the March 11 governorship poll.

He polled 1,019,602 votes to defeat his close rival, Gawuna, who got 890,705 votes.

Not satisfied with the outcome of the election, Gawuna and his party filed a petition to challenge Yusuf’s victory.

During the proceeding, the tribunal deducted 165,663 votes from the votes recorded for Yusuf on the grounds that the ballot papers (165,663) were not stamped, signed and dated as required by law.

The court declared the 165,663 votes invalid while ordering INEC to issue a certificate of return to the APC candidate.

Following the verdict of the tribunal, Yusuf was left with 853,939 votes after the deduction of the votes declared invalid by the tribunal.

The verdict also meant that Gawuna, with 890,705 votes, was declared the winner of the election.

The tribunal said it was the respondents (NNPP and Yusuf) who provided materials from which evidence used against them were drawn.

“The respondents themselves, in my opinion, were the ones who helped this court to arrive at the conclusion that this petition is meritorious for the following reasons: 1. The 1st respondent supplied Certified True Copies of all the critical electoral documents on the fact of which we found the clear evidence to arrive at the conclusion that the 2nd respondent did not win the 18th day of March, governorship election in Kano state,” the court held.

“2. the respondents at the points of pleadings made massive admissions as already stated by my learned brother in the lead judgment.

“3. The few areas where issues were joined relatively to the invalid votes discovered as stated in the lead judgment. The petitioners tendered documentary evidence supplied by the 1st respondent in proof that there was indeed at least 165,616 invalid votes wrongly credited to the score of the 2nd respondent.”

Click here to download a copy of the judgment