Update: Supreme Court Uphelds Sanwo-Olu(Lagos), Bala Muhammad (Bauchi)'s elections Victory.
Sawabiya YarKarkara
Update: Supreme Court Uphelds Sanwo-Olu(Lagos), Bala Muhammad (Bauchi)'s elections Victory.
The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal of the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate of Bauchi State Sadique Abubakar and affirmed the election of Bala Mohammed as the governor of the state.
In a lead judgment on Friday, Justice Ibrahim Saulawa affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeal Abuja, which had on November 17, 2023, upheld the election of Bala Mohammed as the duly elected Governor of Bauchi State.
The unanimous judgment was on an appeal by the gubernatorial candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Ambassador Saddique Baba Abubakar, who was not satisfied with INEC’s declaration of Bala as the winner of the March 18 governorship election in the State.
Justice Saulawa held that Abubakar’s appeal was “devoid of merit” since all the six issues adopted for determination were answered against the appellant.
Recall that the Bauchi Governorship Election Petition Tribunal had earlier declared Bala Mohammed as the winner of the election
Bala, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party polled 525,280 votes to defeat Abubakar, a former Chief of Air Staff, who secured 432,272 votes.
Abubakar had approached the tribunal seeking to nullify Bala Mohammed’s election, but in September, the tribunal dismissed the petition filed by him and the APC.
The tribunal had found that the petitioners failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the alleged manipulation of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the election, to the advantage of the PDP candidate.
Earlier, Supreme Court has affirmed the election of the Governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
Sanwo-Olu’s victory was upheld by the tribunal and Appeal Court in the state.
The kernel of the case of the Labour Party candidate in the election, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, is on Sanwo-Olu’s running mate qualification.
He claimed that the deputy governor, Obafemi Hamzat, had renounced his citizenship as a Nigerian.
The court held that Sanwo-Olu’s deputy is a Nigerian by birth
The court added renounciation of citizenship of a citizens by birth must be registered by the Nigerian president, adding that the appellant did not provide an evidence to that effect.
