Following six hours of intense legal proceedings, the Supreme Court in Abuja has deferred judgment in the Kano State Governorship legal dispute.
This legal battle involves the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), the All Progressives Congress (APC), and their respective gubernatorial candidates, Kabir Yusuf and Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna.
During Thursday’s session, Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN urged the Supreme Court to overturn the decisions made by both the Appeal Court and the Tribunal.
Specifically, Olanipekun implored the five-member panel of the Apex Court, led by Justice John Inyang Okoro, to assess whether INEC guidelines should be grounds for invalidating the election victory of a candidate who secured a win by a margin exceeding 100,000 votes.
The senior counsel contended that it was unprecedented in electoral jurisprudence for an election to be nullified due to the absence of signatures or stamps on the back of ballot papers. He argued that INEC guidelines did not foresee courts annulling elections based on alleged failure to stamp ballot papers.
Furthermore, the governor’s legal team asserted that their client’s affiliation with the NNPP is a pre-election issue and that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to address the matter.
“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.
