In its ruling on November 23, the Court of Appeal, Abuja overturned the State Election Petitions Tribunal’s removal of Abdullahi Sule, the governor of Nasarawa State. The Court claimed that the Tribunal, headed by Ezekiel Ajayi, had committed grave errors by using witness statements taken under oath that were not front-loaded as required by law, leading to the unfair conclusion that the governor’s election should be void.
The three-member panel, chaired by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, rendered a decision in which it was held that the Tribunal had denied the governor a fair trial by failing to take into account and rule on jurisdictional issues brought up during the petition hearing. Additionally, it was decided that the Tribunal had a legal obligation to respond to witness statements submitted with the petition or front-loaded within the legally required 21 days.
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The court determined that the statements utilised by the Tribunal to remove the Governor were the result of illegality and had no probate value that could be used by a law court. This was because the statements were not front-loaded in accordance with the law.
Justice Onyemenam ruled that the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate for governor, David Ombugadu, had filed a null and invalid petition, citing the governor’s improper disregard of jurisdictional issues raised by the Tribunal. She also dismissed the overvoting claims that had been used to void the election, stating that the allegations were not supported by the law.
In light of the fact that Justice Onyemenam acknowledged that the denial of a fair trial for the governor was lethal, he declared all Tribunal rulings to be unconstitutional, overturned all judgements against the governor and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and recognised Sule as the state’s duly elected governor.
Sule was proclaimed the winner of the governorship election by INEC on the grounds that he received 347,209 votes overall, more than his nearest rival David Emmanuel Ombugadu, who received 283,016 votes.
