The Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal ruling has been upheld by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which has withdrawn its appeal.
INEC stated that it withdrew its appeal because it had no justification to contest any judgment in a letter dated October 6 and signed by Suleiman Alkali, the head of the commission’s legal department in Kano.
“I have been instructed by the Commission headquarters that INEC as an umpire have no reason to appeal any judgment.
“Consequently, the National Commission In charge if Legal Services and National Commissioner in charge of Kano zone directed that the appeal be withdrawn and all processes for all Appeals should be forwarded to the Kano Office,” the letter, addressed to the secretary of the Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, read.
On September 20, a three-person tribunal removed Governor Abba Yusuf from office and proclaimed Nasiru Gawuna, the APC candidate, the victor of the March 18 governorship election.
The tribunal took 165,663 votes away from Mr. Yusuf’s vote as a result of the ballots (165,663) not being stamped or signed, according to the verdict read over Zoom’s teleconference service.
However, the electoral commission had already filed a 33-ground appeal against the ruling, claiming that the trial tribunal had committed a legal error by naming the petitioner’s candidate, who was not a party to the case, as the election’s victor.
According to the statement, the tribunal “erred in law and fell into grave error when it failed or neglected to properly evaluate the evidence before it, especially evidence elicited during cross examination by the appellant which had a far-reaching consequence on the resolution of the issues in the petition thereby occasioning a miscarriage of justice to the appellant.”
In a different ground, INEC asserted that the tribunal entered the case area improperly and infringed on the appellant’s fundamental rights by, among other things, privately examining documents in the corners of their chambers, performing mathematical calculations, making discoveries, and conducting investigations to arrive at conclusions that could only have been reached with evidence presented in open court, which was not the case in this instance, rendering the entire proceeding invalid.