Gigawa guber poll: S’Court affirms Gov Lamido’s victory

ABUJA—The Supreme Court, yesterday, upheld the election of Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa state, just as it dismissed an appeal lodged before it by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and its gubernatorial candidate in the state, Alhaji Muhammad Badaru Abubakar, for lacking in merit.
The appellants had gone before the apex court with a view to sacking the sitting governor of the state, Lamido, who won his election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from office on the premise that he tendered forged certificates to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
They pleaded the court to go ahead and upturn two previous decisions of both the Jigawa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal and the Kaduna Division of the Court of Appeal, which ab-initio, affirmed the governor as the bona-fide winner of the April 26, 2011, gubernatorial election in the state.
However, in an unanimous judgment by a 5-man panel of justices of the apex court yesterday, they maintained that the lower courts entered their verdicts correctly, adding that the appellants failed to prove their allegations against the governor.
return to court on February 24 to receive detailed reasons why it decided to uphold the judgments of the lower courts.

The appellate court had in a judgment it delivered on the matter, maintained that the tribunal followed the right path as at the time frame of 180 days within which it closed the case, adding that allegation made by the appellants that Sule Lamido was not eligible to contest the April 2011 governorship election due to lack of qualification, was an issue that had no relation with the appeal.