The Supreme Court on Tuesday reserved judgment in an appeal challenging the March 2023 governorship election in Nasarawa State.
Justice Kudirat Kekere-Eku who led the five member panel of justices said the date for the judgment delivery would be communicated to parties involved.
The legal battle is between the incumbent governor, Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its governorship candidate, Emmanuel Ombugadu.
The PDP through its counsel Kanu Agabi, SAN appealed to the apex court to set aside the November 23, 2023 judgment of the Court of Appeal which upheld Sule as the lawfully elected governor.
Agabi canvassed that the October 2, 2023 judgment of the Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal granted in favour of PDP and Ombugadu be restored.
He claimed that the court of appeal unjustly nullified the tribunal’s judgment and unjustly declared Sule as winner of the March 18 gubernatorial election.
He pleaded that the votes of the Nasarawa people to count and be meaningful by declaring PDP and Ombugadu as winners as rightly done by the Tribunal.
Meanwhile, APC lawyers, led by Akin Olujinmi SAN while adopting his brief of arguments asked the apex court to carefully looked into the cited authorities to back up their request for dismissal of the case.
The Appeal Court had on November 2024 reversed the sack of Gov Sule by the State Election Petitions Tribunal in its judgment delivered on October 2.
The appellate court held that the 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.
It 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.
It also held that no petition can lawfully be amended outside the 21 days can be 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.
Onyemenam held that the petition by the governorship candidate of the PDP was a nullity and invalid on the grounds that the jurisdictional issues raised by the governor were unlawfully ignored by the Tribunal.
He 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.
He agreed that the denial of a fair hearing against the governor was fatal and tendered all decisions of the Tribunal invalid.
In all, the appeal court reversed all orders made against the governor and 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 Emmanuel Ombugadu who secured 283,016 votes. (NAN)
