The Supreme Court has set aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Abuja which nullified the election of Governor Kabir Yusuf of Kano State.
A five-member panel of justices on Friday unanimously held that the lower court misunderstood the import of the purported deduction of 165,616 ballot papers in favour of Governor Yusuf.
The lead judgment by Justice Inyang Okoro also held that the issue of Governor Yusuf’s membership was a pre-election matter.
He said the finding that by the virtue of Section 177(c) of the Nigerian Constitution and Section 134(1) of the Electoral Act, Governor Yusuf was not sponsored by the NNPP, was not a finding of the electoral tribunal but a mere observation that his name was not contained in the membership list
“This court has consistently maintained that the issue of nomination or sponsorship of a candidate for an election is completely an exclusive prerogative of the political party,” he held.
The court returned 165,000 votes to the governor.
In September 2023, the election petition tribunal in the state deducted 165,663 votes from Yusuf’s total number of votes and declared them as “invalid”.
The tribunal said it was satisfied that the ballot papers of the affected votes were not stamped or signed.
INEC had declared that Yusuf received 1,019,602 votes to defeat Nasiru Gawuna, who had 809,705 votes.
The election petition tribunal in the state nullified the victory of Yusuf, therefore, the New Nigeria’s Peoples Party (NNPP) candidate in the March 18 governorship election.
In turn, the tribunal affirmed Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the duly elected governor of the state.
The tribunal ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeal in November 2023, saying Yusuf was not qualified to contest the election.
The governor proceeded to the Supreme Court to seek redress.
Gawuna had also questioned the NNPP membership of Yusuf, arguing that the party should not have sponsored his election for the election.
But the apex court held that the tribunal never held that Governor Yusuf was not qualified to vie for election as erroneously held by the Court of Appeal.
The court described the issue of nomination as exclusively the internal affairs of a political party and therefore not justiciable.
