The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has ordered the removal of Mallam Abba Kabir Yusuf as governor of Kano State.
The court affirmed the ruling of the lower tribunal, which declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Nasir Gawuna as the winner of the 18th March election.
Yusuf, who was the candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in the election, now has the Supreme Court as the last judicial intervention in claiming his position.
Following the governorship election in the state, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared that the NNPP’s Yusuf polled 1,019,602 votes against the APC’s 890,705 to emerge victorious.
But the tribunal on September 29, 2023 invalidated over 165,663 ballots thumb printed in favour of NNPP.
The court ruled that the votes were deducted because the ballot papers with which they were cast were not stamped or signed. This rendered the votes invalid, according to the tribunal.
The three-man panel of judges led by Justice Oluyemi Akintan Osadebay said the petitioner was able to prove the allegation of the invalidity of some of the votes on the grounds that the election was not in compliance with the provision of the Electoral Act, 2022.
The tribunal then ordered that the invalid votes be expunged from Yusuf’s scores.
Displeased with the judgement, Yusuf, in a notice of appeal dated 2nd October 2023, argued that the tribunal erred when it relied on sections 71 and 63 of the Electoral Act, 2022 to invalidate the 165,616 ballot papers returned in his favour.
The governor also said the respondent, (the APC) “did not plead with the polling units where the alleged invalid papers ballot papers were used and the tribunal was therefore wrong to accede to cancel the lawful votes”.
There was no witness presented by the first respondent to testify as to the use of any of the ballot papers in any polling unit. NNPP argued that the tribunal did not demonstrate in its judgement how it arrived at its decision on 165,616 invalid votes against the appellant.
The governor also argued in ground 20, that the tribunal misdirected itself when it went out of the judicial duties by constituting itself into witnesses, investigators and sat as judges.
