The election of Kaduna State’s governor, Uba Sani, was upheld by the Court of Appeal on Friday in Abuja.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Mohammed Ashiru, filed an appeal to contest the results of the state’s March 18 gubernatorial election. The court dismissed the petition in a unanimous ruling by the panel of three justices.
Justice Obietonbara Daniel-Kalio delivered the lead judgment for the court, which supported the Kaduna State Election Petition Tribunal’s decision to certify Governor Sani’s election.
It concluded that the tribunal’s majority ruling, which deemed the PDP’s and its candidate’s case to be abandoned, was correct.
The appeal court stated that the petitioners’ early application to the tribunal for the issuing of a pre-hearing notice was in violation of Paragraph 18(1) of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act 2022, as demonstrated by the records that were presented to it.
The appellants’ claim that they acted “out of the abundance of caution” was rejected by the court, which pointed out that the statute required that such an application be filed seven days following the conclusion of the parties’ pleadings.
It found that being diligent in pursuing a case could not be equated with jumping the gun, and it further stated that one of the prerequisites for a court to exercise jurisdiction over a matter is that the case must be brought about through the proper legal channels.
Furthermore, the court upheld the invalidity of the comments made under oath by the majority of the witnesses who provided testimony on behalf of the Appellants, as they were not included in the petition.
It concluded that the witnesses were declared legally incompetent because they had not submitted their frontload statements within the allotted 21 days to file the petition.
Furthermore, the appellate court determined that hearsay testimony was provided by the majority of the petitioners’ witnesses.
The court expressed its satisfaction that the tribunal had fairly considered and given probative significance to the evidence that the parties had presented to it.
It settled all five of the appeal’s issues, all of which were directed at the appellants.
“The appeal lacks merit and it is accordingly dismissed. Parties are to bear their respective costs,” the court held.
Recall that the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Governor Sani, received 730,001 votes to defeat Ashiru, the PDP candidate, who received 719, 196 votes, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Nevertheless, the PDP and its candidate went to the tribunal to contest the election’s outcome since they were unhappy with it.
The petitioners claimed that corrupt acts and a failure to follow the terms of the Electoral Act 2022 rendered the election illegitimate and that Governor Uba was not legitimately elected by the majority of valid votes cast.
They insisted that there were discrepancies in INEC’s accreditation records, alleging that some polling unit results were improperly canceled.