The Court of Appeal in Abuja on
Thursday reversed the sack of the Nasarawa State Governor, Abdullahi Sule by
the State Election Petitions Tribunal in its judgment delivered on October 2.
The Appellate Court held that the
Tribunal headed by Ezekiel Ajayi acted in grave error in using witness
statements on oath, not front-loaded as required by law to arrive at the unjust
conclusion of nullifying the election of the governor.
In a judgment delivered by
Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the Court of Appeal said the Tribunal was legally
bound to act on witness statements filed along with the petition or
front-loaded within 21 days stipulated by law.
The Court held that no petition
can lawfully be amended outside the 21 days allowed by law as wrongly done by
the Tribunal.
Since the statements used by the
Tribunal to sack the Governor were not front-loaded in compliance with the law,
the statements were a product of illegality with no probate value for a law
Court to act upon.
The Court also dismissed the
over-voting issues used to annul the election, adding that the allegations were
not established by law.
Justice Onyemenam held that the
petition by the Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP was
a nullity and invalid on the grounds that the jurisdictional issues raised by
the governor were unlawfully ignored by the Tribunal.
The Court of Appeal ruled that
the Tribunal denied the Governor a fair hearing by not considering and making
findings on the issues of jurisdiction raised at the hearing of the petition.
Justice Onyemenam agreed that the
denial of a fair hearing against the governor was fatal and tendered all
decisions of the Tribunal invalid.
In all, the Court of Appeal
reversed all orders made against the governor and the Independent National
Electoral Commission INEC and affirmed Sule as the lawfully elected governor of
the state.
INEC had declared Sule the winner
of the governorship election on the grounds that he polled a total of 347,209
votes to defeat his closest opponent David Emmanuel Ombugadu who secured
283,016 votes.
In a split decision on October 2,
the tribunal nullified Sule’s election and upheld Ombugadu as the winner.
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