JUST IN: THE SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS NASIR IDRIS AS THE GOVERNOR OF KEBBI AND REJECTS THE PDP AND BANDE’S APPEAL.

Babatunji wusu –

Nasir Idris’s victory in the Kebbi State governorship election on March 18, 2023, has been upheld by the Nigerian Supreme Court.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Aminu Bande, filed an appeal to have Idris removed from his position as the elected governor of Kebbi state. The court denied their request in a decision on Friday.

In its decision on Friday, the supreme court said that the appeal was without substance.

The main judge, Uwani Abba-Aji, said that after giving the appeal considerable thought, he had come to the conclusion that it had no value and was thus dismissed.

The Kebbi gubernatorial election was deemed inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in March 2023 because to “massive vote cancellation and over-voting” in 20 of the state’s 21 Local Government Areas (LGAs).

The electoral commission then set a second election date of April 15, 2023.

All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Idris won 409,225 votes at the end of the supplementary election, besting Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) contender Aminu Bande, who received 360,940 votes.

But Bande and his group rejected the decision and filed a petition with the Tribunal.

The petitioners asserted that Idris was ineligible to run in the election and that there was excessive voting at some polling places.

Additionally, they claimed that the deputy governor had provided INEC with a forgery of a secondary school recommendation letter.

But according to the Tribunal’s chairman, Ofem Ofem, the petitioners were unable to provide concrete evidence that the deputy governor, the third respondent, had given INEC a forged certificate.

Ofem stated that anomalies were discovered in nine of the 59 polling places that were examined in relation to the problem of excessive voting.

The panel took 1,735 votes away from the APC and removed almost 900 votes from the PDP’s total.

The chairman did clarify, though, that the number of votes being subtracted would not affect the difference between the winner and runner-up in the election.

He went on to say that there wasn’t enough solid proof to back up allegations of over voting and anomalies in other polling places.
Idris’s legitimacy as the state’s legitimately elected governor was confirmed, and all other accusations were dropped.