The Court of Appeal in Abuja has reversed the nullification of the election of Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State by a tribunal.
The appellate court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of Justices, voided the verdict of the Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which sacked Governor Sule of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Justice Uchechukwu Onuemenam, who delivered the lead judgment held that evidence before it established that the tribunal relied on legally inadmissible evidence, to declare the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, David Ombugadu, as the valid winner of the governorship election that held in the state on March 18.
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Witnesses
In the lead judgement, the appellate held that, the tribunal wrongly relied on the evidence of eight of the witnesses who were produced by the PDP candidate, whose witnesses statements on oath were not front-loaded alongside the petition.
It stressed that Section 285(5) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, section 132(7) of the Electoral Act 2022 and Paragraphs 4(5) (6) and 14(2) of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act, every written statement on oath must be filed alongside the petition, within the statutorily allocated time.
The court held that, “where a trial court admitted and acted on an illegally inadmissible evidence, it is the duty of the appellate court to ensure that such illegally inadmissible evidence are expunged.
“A court of law is only allowed to act on legally admissible evidence. If documents are unlawfully allowed by a trial court, the appellate court is duty bound to exclude the documents and discountenance the evidence.”
The appellate court proceeded to strike out all the evidence and exhibits that were tendered before the tribunal by the eight witnesses.
It held that, the evidence of 12 remaining witnesses that testified for the PDP candidate, were not sufficient to sustain the judgement of the tribunal.
More so, the appellate court held that, the tribunal was in error, when it deducted a total of 1, 868 votes that were credited to governor Sule, on the premise that over-voting occurred in four polling units.
It held that the tribunal was wrong in its decision, since the petitioners did not provide necessary documents needed to prove over-voting.
The court noted that Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines, and other electoral documents, were merely dumped on the tribunal without any of them demonstrated to show how the over-voting occurred.
Dismissing evidence
It faulted the tribunal for summarily dismissing the evidence of witnesses that testified for the APC candidate, describing the action as “perverse”, adding that none of the witnesses that were called by the PDP and its candidate, gave valid evidence that the tribunal could have acted on.
It held that the tribunal acted wrongly when it recomputed votes and made the declaration that returned the PDP candidate as winner of the election.
“On the whole, I hold that this appeal has merit and succeeds, the majority judgement of the tribunal delivered on October 2 is hereby dismissed,” the court held.
Consequently, it vacated the order of the tribunal that directed the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to withdraw the Certificate of Return that was issued to governor Sule as the winner of the governorship contest.
The Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal had on October 2, nullified the election of Governor Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and declared David Ombudagu of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the March 18 governorship election in the State.
The three-member tribunal in a 2-1 judgment held that the PDP proved that the polling unit results it presented were manipulated in favour of the APC.
Based on this, the tribunal recomputed the votes accruing to the PDP candidate in the election and held that he secured the majority of valid votes at the election.
The dissenting judgment by one member of the tribunal was to the effect that the petition of the PDP lacked merit.
In March 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Abdullahi Sule winner of the Nasarawa State governorship election with 347, 209 votes to beat his closest opponent, David Ombugadu of the PDP who scored 283,016 votes.
Dissatisfied with the outcome, the PDP and its candidate Governor, Abdullahi Sule approached the court of appeal.
