Appeal court affirms Abdullahi Sule as Nasarawa gov, sets aside tribunal verdict

Our reporter/ The court of appeal, Abuja, on Thursday affirmed the election of Abdullahi Sule as the duly-elected governor of Nasarawa state.

The appellate court also set aside the October 2 judgement of the Nasarawa State Election Petitions Tribunal that sacked APC’s Sule and declared David Ombugadu, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the governorship election.

The three-member panel in a judgement on Thursday morning held that the tribunal erred in law in concluding that Sule did not win majority of the votes cast in the election.

The Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam led three-member panel held 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.

According to them, the Tribunal, led 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.

The court further held that no petition can lawfully be amended outside the 21 days allowed by law as wrongly done by the Tribunal.

According to the appellate court, 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.

Since the statements used by the Tribunal to sack the Governor were not front-loaded in compliance with the law, the court held that the statements were the 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 allegations were not established by law.

Justice Onyemenam held that the petition by the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), David Ombugadu, was a nullity and invalid on the ground that the jurisdictional issues raised by the governor was unlawfully ignored by the Tribunal.

He agreed that the denial of fair hearing against the governor was fatal and tendered all decisions of the Tribunal invalid.