Babatunji Wusu –
A Court of Appeal led by Justice Elphreda Williams-Dawodu gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) an order on Sunday to remove the Certificate of Return that Plateau State Governor Caleb Mutfwang had received.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate for governor, Nentawe Goshwe, was proclaimed by the court to be the legitimate victor of the March 18 governorship election.
The court mandated that INEC provide him with a fresh Certificate of Return.
Just nine months after the elections, courts have removed at least three governors whose contests were challenged by other political parties and declared one election to be invalid.
The state governors who were fired and the reasons the court gave are listed below:
Abba Kabir Yusuf (NNPP)
According to INEC, the APC’s candidate, Nasir Gawuna, received 890,705 votes, while the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) received 1,019,602 votes to defeat them. The NNPP candidate thus prevailed by a margin of 128,897 votes.
Under the direction of Justice Oluyemi Osadebay, the Election Petitions Tribunal declared Governor Yusuf’s election to be void. The panel reached this conclusion by deeming Yusuf’s 165,663 votes to be void.
The judge declared that the ballots for the 165,663 votes were invalid because they were not signed or stamped.
The court mandated that Gawuna receive a new certificate of return and that Yusuf’s be revoked.
The verdict of the tribunal was also confirmed by the Court of Appeal in Abuja.
Under the direction of Justice M.A. Adumeh, the panel of three people concluded that Yusuf was not listed as a member of his political party.
Citing a provision of the Electoral Act, he declared that a party must maintain hard and soft copies of the names of its registered members.
The tribunal erred, the judge said, in not disqualifying Yusuf in its decision.
“The tribunal was wrong to not have disqualified him,” the judge declared. Their election is doomed if they don’t follow Section 177(c). Regardless of how well the candidate does, a party’s reckless nomination of a candidate makes him a nullity. Sponsorship without membership is like to applying nothing at all; it is unsustainable. This blatant disregard for the Constitution is evident in the way that it is being applied.
But Yusuf has promised to return to the Supreme Court with his mandate.
APC’s Abdullahi Sule
Abdullahi Sule, the state governor, was fired by the Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in October, and INEC was directed to invalidate his Certificate of Return and award it to David Ombugadu, the PDP.
Ombugadu has sued Sule in order to challenge INEC’s declaration of Sule as the election’s victor.
In order to assist him win, he claimed before the tribunal that his genuine votes had been unjustly suppressed and that the APC’s votes had been artificially increased, particularly in the EC8Bs of Gayam and Chiroma Wards of the Lafia Local Government Area.
In its ruling, the tribunal, presided over by Justice Ezekiel Ajayi, subtracted the votes that were added in error to Sule and added back the votes that were subtracted from David Ombugadu’s total number of votes. The certified copies of the polling unit results (forms EC8A) that the petitioners submitted served as the foundation for this decision.
On Wednesday, November 15, at its Abuja session, the Court of case postponed making a decision regarding the case.
PDP’s Dauda Lawal
After defeating the APC’s Bello Matawalle, the incumbent governor of Zamfara State, Dauda Lawal of the PDP was proclaimed the winner by INEC.
Matawalle had appealed the March 18 governorship election results in a lawsuit that he had filed with the tribunal, but it was rejected for lack of merit.
On Thursday, November 16, the Court of Appeal rendered its ruling, deeming the poll unresolved and directing INEC to conduct fresh elections in two local administrations.
The Minister of State for Defense, Matawalle, was able to prove Lawal’s election was illegitimate, according to the appellate court.
Sulaiman Idris, the governor’s spokeswoman, stated in a statement that the governor’s legal staff was analyzing the ruling before deciding what needed to be done next.
PDP’s Caleb Mutfwang
Nentawe Goshwe, an APC member, contested Caleb Mutfwang’s victory in the tribunal on the grounds that the governor was not duly nominated and endorsed by his party.
Goshwe’s petition was unanimously dismissed by a three-person tribunal panel led by Justice R. Irele-Ifijeh for lack of merit.
Citing Section 177 of the Constitution, the three-member Court of Appeal bench headed by Justice Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu decided on Sunday, November 19, that the governor was not lawfully sponsored by the PDP for the election.
The PDP was ordered by a standing High Court order to hold a lawful party congress prior to endorsing candidates for governorship and other offices, however the judge pointed out that the party had disregarded this requirement.
Sulaiman Idris, the governor’s spokeswoman, stated in a statement that the governor’s legal staff was analyzing the ruling before deciding what needed to be done next.
