The governorship election petition tribunal, convened in Lafia, Nasarawa State, has made a significant judgement by removing Abdullahi Sule from the position of Nasarawa state governor, as reported by Igbere TV.
Furthermore, the tribunal has officially announced the candidate representing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), David Ombugadu, as the rightful and duly elected governor of the state.
This consequential verdict was handed down on a Monday, with two of the justices reaching a consensus that the PDP had indeed emerged victorious in the election, while one dissenting judge held a contrary view.
Igbere TV recalls that Governor Sule was declared to have polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent, Mr Ombugadu, who secured 283,016 votes by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the March 18, 2023 governorship election in the state.
In April, Ombugadu & the PDP approached the tribunal (EPT/NS/GOV/01/23) challenging the declaration of Sule as Governor. INEC, Sule & APC were listed as 1st, 2nd & 3rd Respondents respectively.
The PDP accused the State INEC officials of connivance and computing results in error. According to the petition, the results from Eggon, Awe, Lafia and Keffi local Councils as announced by the Returning Officer were at variance with IREV portal results, INEC Certifies True Copies (CTCs) and Polling Unit results.
From the INEC CTC results and IREV portal given to PDP, the APC scored 289524 votes, while the PDP recorded 293653 votes. PDP won with a margin of 4,130 votes over APC, so we wonder where the Returning Officer got his results from, the Party noted.
However, Mohammed Dikko, Dr. Ayo Adekunle and Burkaa all Senior Advocates of Nigeria representing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Respondents prayed the tribunal to dismiss the petition in its entirety with costs awarded against the Petitioners. They insisted that there were no credible witnesses presented by the Petitioners to buttress their allegation of computational error or reduction of votes in the calculation of the results.
They also argued that the petitioner dumped the BVAS machines and IReV records at the tribunal without presenting the records in the IReV and BVAS machines or even displaying them for everyone to see so as to show what was contained in the records.
A former Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Kanu Godwin Agabi (SAN) for Ombugadu and J S Okutepa (SAN) for the PDP, asked the Court to declare their Candidate as duly-elected.
“The Polling Units results (Form EC8As) are tendered before the tribunal and they are the original results from the reliable places where elections are won and lost. Again, before the tribunal are Certified documents and the Form EC8As Results were different from what’s in Forms EC8B, EC8C, EC8D hence the tribunal should focus on the witnesses depositions and documents before them which need no Witnesses to know who the winner is,” Agabi noted.
