Appeal Court overturns sack of Nasarawa Gov, Abdullahi Sule
The Court of Appeal in Abuja has overturned the State Election Petitions Tribunal’s dismissal of Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule.
The Appellate Court ruled that the Tribunal, led by Ezekiel Ajayi, committed a grave error by relying on oath witness testimonies that were not front-loaded as required by law to reach the unfair conclusion of invalidating the governor’s election.
The Court of Appeal, in a judgement delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, stated that the Tribunal was legally required to act on witness statements presented with the petition or front-loaded within the 21-day period prescribed 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.
