By Milcah Tanimu
On Friday, the Court of Appeal in Abuja unanimously annulled the election of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State. The three-member panel of justices ruled that Governor Yusuf was not a legitimate candidate in the gubernatorial election conducted in the state on March 18.
The court stated that the presented evidence established that Governor Yusuf was not a member of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) at the time of the election. According to the court, under section 177(c) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, Yusuf was ineligible to contest the governorship election as he was not properly sponsored by the NNPP.
In the lead judgment delivered by Justice M. U. Adumeh, the court emphasized, “A person must be a member of a political party before he can be sponsored for an election. Sponsorship without membership is like putting something on nothing.”
Consequently, the Appeal Court upheld the earlier decision of the Kano State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which had invalidated Governor Yusuf’s election. The tribunal, in a virtual judgment on September 20, had removed Yusuf from office and declared Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the legitimate winner of the March 18 governorship poll.
The tribunal, led by Justice Oluyemi Akintan-Osadebay, found that some ballot papers used to declare Yusuf the winner were not signed or stamped by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). As a result, 165,663 votes credited to the NNPP candidate were declared invalid, reducing Yusuf’s total votes from 1,019,602 to 853,939.
Following this deduction, Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna of the APC emerged as the winner of the election with 890,705 votes, surpassing Governor Yusuf’s adjusted tally.
