The supreme court has held that
Kashim Shettima, vice president-elect, is not guilty of double nomination as
alleged by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
A five-member panel of the
supreme court said this on Tuesday — while delivering judgment in an appeal
filed by the PDP seeking to void the election of Shettima and President-elect
Bola Tinubu on the grounds of double nomination.
The opposition party claimed that
Shettima was still the APC’s candidate for Borno central senatorial district on
July 14 when he accepted the nomination for vice-presidential candidate.
According to the appellants,
Shettima dropped his senatorial nomination on July 15.
“Facts is that the fourth respondent who had
earlier been nominated by his party as a senatorial candidate was given another
option or imperative to be the party’s vice presidential candidate. He accepted
the second option with a mindset intention and action to relish the first
nomination as senatorial candidate,” he said.
“The party nominated another
person to replace him. His prompt and diligent withdrawal as senatorial
candidate demonstrates plainly that he had no intentions designed or plans to
hold two nominations…the fact that he withdrew after being nominated as vice president
is of no mention.
“Multiple nominations with the
electoral act does not occur simply because he accepted a second nomination,
the fact that the acceptance was immediately relinquished so as to pave way for
another person to replace him as senatorial candidate cannot be overlooked or
disregarded.
“We have to be very careful the
way we read provisions of facts particularly when they are public interest
issues and for presidential requirements where it is broad knowledge where it
is very clear that the purpose of the statutory provision is to avoid a
situation where the person holds two nominations to have an election as a
candidate either in two constituencies or political parties.
“The purpose of that provision is
to avoid the situation but where a person has clearly said ‘no I don’t want’,
and relinquishes one, I do not think it will be acting in good faith to jump on
him and infer something else.
“Above all, there was no double
nomination. So it is very wrong to contend that the vice-presidential candidate
had a double nomination.”
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