Says Tribunal’s judgment a nullity
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Thursday reversed the sack of a Governor Abdullahi Sule by the Nasarawa State Election Petitions Tribunal in its judgement of October 2. 2023.
The Appellate Court held that 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 judgement delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the Court of Appeal said that 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 law, the statements were product of illegality with no probate value for a law Court to act upon.
The Court also dismissed the over voting issues also used to annul the election adding that allegations to that effect were not established by law.
Justice Onyemenam held that the petition by the Governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was a nullity and invalid on the ground that the jurisdictional issues raised by the governor was unlawfully ignored by the Tribunal.
According to the Court of Appeal, the Tribunal denied the governor fair hearing by not considering and making findings on the issues of jurisdiction raised at the hearing of the petition.
Justice Onyemenam agreed that denial of fair hearing against the governor was fatal and rendered 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 winner of the governorship election on the ground that he polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent David Emmanuel Ombugadu who secured 283,016 votes.
Court Appeal said that the majority split decision of October 2, of tribunal that nullified Sule’s election and declared Ombugadu as the winner was in error and therefore a nullity.