Election tribunal upholds Gov. Uba Sani’s victory
POLITICS DIGEST- The governorship election petition tribunal sitting in Kaduna has upheld the victory of Uba Sani, the governor of Kaduna State, in the 18 March governorship election in the state.
Mr Sani was the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
His election was challenged by the first runner-up, Isah Ashiru of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The three-member panel led by Victor Oviawe declared that the PDP and its candidate could not validate their claim that the election was rigged.
The verdict was announced via Zoom on Thursday.
According to Channels Television, in a split judgement of two to one, the panel’s lead justice dismissed the petition on the ground that the pre-hearing notice was filed out of time and therefore deemed to be abandoned.
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The tribunal chairman and another member held that the appeal brought by the PDP and Mr Ashiru wasn’t meritorious because the filing of the pre-hearing notice “was abandoned and out of time, and therefore had dealt the entire petition a fatal blow.”
However, the tribunal noted that if the petition had not been dismissed for lack of merit, it would have ordered a supplementary election in 22 polling units within 90 days.
Mr Sani polled 730,001 votes to defeat his closest rival Mr Ashiru who scored 719,196 votes.
The Labour Party (LP) candidate, Jonathan Asake, came a distant third with 58,283 votes, while Suleiman Hunkuyi of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) scored 21,405 votes.
While the LP and NNPP accepted the outcome of the election, the PDP and its candidate rejected the results, alleging that the Independent National Electoral Commission declared the wrong candidate the winner.
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