The Supreme Court has reserved it’s decision in the Kano State Governorship legal dispute on Thursday in Abuja after six hours of heated legal fireworks.
The New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP and the All Progressives Congress APC, as well as its governorship candidates Kabir Yusuf and Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna, are at the center of the judicial dispute.
Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN requested the Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn the decisions of the Appeal Court and the Tribunal.
Olanipekun expressly asked the five-member Apex Court bench, led by Justice John Inyang Okoro, to examine whether the INEC guidelines could be used to invalidate the election result of a candidate who won by more than 100,000 votes.
According to the senior lawyer, this is the first occasion in the history of electoral law that an election has been declared null and void because ballot papers were not signed or stamped at the back.
He stated that INEC standards do not contemplate the courts nullifying an election based on INEC’s alleged failure to stamp ballot papers on the back.
The governor’s legal team argued that the governor’s membership in the NNPP is a pre-election matter and that the Court of Appeal lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.
“The judgment of the lower courts is very unfair to the appellant and we urge your lordships to upturn it,” Olanipekun said.
“Nobody raised the legality or illegality of the ballots. They tendered the ballot from the bar. Nobody spoke to it,” Olanipekun replied.
“The ballot papers were legal because they were issued by INEC officials.
But in a counter-argument, the All Progressives Congress (APC) counsel, Chief Akin Olujimi maintained that the Electoral Act mandates INEC presiding officers to sign the back of ballot papers after the conclusion of the election to make them legal and lawful
Olujinmi said the findings of the tribunal were simply that the ballot papers were not signed at the back and not dated and proceeded to cancel the election where the ballots were used.
He said electoral irregularities are manifest on the disputed ballot papers.
On the issue of party membership, Olujinmi argued that the NNPP membership register did not show the name of Abba Yusuf on it.
Counsel for INEC Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, supported the arguments of Olanipekun.
He submitted that the decisions of the lower courts were flawed.
Mahmoud said the testimony of a subpoenaed witness(PW32) which the tribunal relied on to sack Abba Yusuf was not front-loaded along with the petition at the tribunal contrary to the Electoral Act.
“They were our ballot papers issued by INEC,” Mahmoud said, it was not the duty of a voter to check if ballot papers were signed or not but that of the party agents.
He said INEC’s contention is that the tribunal went far beyond its powers in vetting each of the ballot papers in their chambers and not in open court.
Mahmoud contended that membership of a political party is clearly an internal affair of a political party and Abba Yusuf’s name was forwarded to INEC before the election while his party membership card was tendered in evidence at the tribunal.
Counsel for the NNPP, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo SAN said ballot papers were actually cast at the polling units but the APC legal team did not specify the polling units affected at the Tribunal in line with the rules of the court.
Awomolo said ballot papers not signed ought not to affect the validity of an election.
“My submission is that the election is the decision of the people. The tribunal was wrong to recount the ballots in its chambers.
The NNPP counsel added that not a single witness told the Tribunal that ballot papers were not stamped.
He urged the Apex Court to restore the 165,165 cancelled votes of Abba Yusuf and affirm his election.
After taking arguments from parties, Justice Okoro reserved judgment on the governor’s appeal.
The tribunal had in September nullified Yusuf’s election, citing over 160,000 invalid votes due to missing signatures and stamps on the ballot papers.
The APC had challenged the election outcome at the Tribunal, alleging electoral malpractice.
Yusuf, however, appealed the tribunal’s decision to the Court of Appeal.
But the Court of Appeal in Abuja dismissed the appeal filed by the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) candidate against the judgment of the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which declared the All Progressive Congress (APC) flag bearer, Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna, as the winner of the state’s governorship poll held on March 18.