It is significant that APC didn’t even claim to have won the majority or plurality of the votes cast during the governorship election in Kano this year.

I detest political cultism, which the Kwankwasiyya movement represents, and also resent Governor Abba Yusuf’s incipient governance by destructive vengeance, which saw him remorselessly destroying multimillion-naira buildings belonging to political opponents in his first few weeks in power, but the verdict that overturned his victory strikes me as deficient in both legal and logical merit.

APC appears intent to get back through judicial manipulation what it lost through the ballot box. It’s a higher-order, more sophisticated, and less primitive version of the broad-day electoral heist they perpetrated in 2019 after former Governor Abdullahi “Gandollar” Ganduje lost to the same Abba Yusuf. INEC was manipulated to declare the election as “inconclusive,” even though APC unambiguously lost it. It bears no recounting what happened thereafter.

The single-minded, concentrated, unstoppable political steamroller that Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso unleashed in this year’s governorship election in Kano was simply too overpowering for Ganduje and Nasir Gawuna to withstand.

As I argued in my April 01, 2023, column titled “Between Obi and Kwankwaso, Who’s the ‘Local Champion’ Now?” Kwankwaso didn’t run for president to win it. He did so to “leverage his presidential run to help his son-in-law get elected as governor of Kano State. And he achieved his goal.” He obviously learned from 2019 and was prepared for 2023.

It is significant that APC didn’t even claim to have won the majority or plurality of the votes cast during the governorship election in Kano this year. It merely invoked a welter of issues that are extraneous to the vote, which are balanced on a dubiously slender thread of legal evidence, to ask for the reversal of NNPP’s victory.

Three points constitute the nucleus of APC’s judicial challenge to the NNPP’s victory at the tribunal: that NNPP’s Abba Yusuf wasn’t a registered member of the party on whose platform he ran; that the Electoral Act was violated through “over-voting,” violence, and disenfranchisement; and that 165,663 votes for NNPP in Tarauni, a Kano local government, were invalid because they lacked INEC’s markers of authenticity, i.e., stamps, signatures, and dates.

Invalidating 165,663 votes out of NNPP’s 1,019,602 votes while leaving APC’s 890,705 votes untouched handed a dubious victory to APC by default.

It’s easy to see how APC’s victory at the tribunal will crumble like a paper bag upon appeal. First, membership of a political party is an internal matter that non-party members have no legal right to be concerned about.
In its response to APC’s challenge of Peter Obi’s qualification to run for president on the platform of Labour Party because he was not a registered member of the party as of April 30, 2022, when the party turned in its membership register to INEC, the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal ruled that, “The issue of membership of a political party is an internal party affair.” It dismissed APC’s challenge on the basis of this.

A May 26 Supreme Court ruling also says rival parties have no right to question the validity of the internal decisions made by other parties unless they can prove that they suffered demonstrable harm as a result of the internal decisions another party took. So, the Kano governorship election tribunal’s verdict on this issue will be as dead as a dodo upon appeal.

DesChyko:


Invalidating 165,663 votes out of NNPP’s 1,019,602 votes while leaving APC’s 890,705 votes untouched handed a dubious victory to APC by default.

It’s easy to see how APC’s victory at the tribunal will crumble like a paper bag upon appeal. First, membership of a political party is an internal matter that non-party members have no legal right to be concerned about.


https://gazettengr.com/farooq-kperogi-why-the-kano-tribunal-verdict-cant-stand/

nlfpmod

Malroux:
No sane person takes Karishika or Kperogi serious. He is a double faced human who supports what interest him like the Muslim/Muslim ticket but will criticize what he doesn't like all in the name of being a journalist.

Malroux:
No sane person takes Karishika or Kperogi serious. He is a double faced human who supports what interest him like the Muslim/Muslim ticket but will criticize what he doesn't like all in the name of being a journalist.

Malroux:
No sane person takes Karishika or Kperogi serious. He is a double faced human who supports what interest him like the Muslim/Muslim ticket but will criticize what he doesn't like all in the name of being a journalist.

Yobabad:
But some members of YMM (Yoruba Muslims miscreants) have been rejoicing

fergie001:
NNPP killed their case. They might get lucky though but the were too lackadaisical about it.

The tribunal Judges were like the Judges in Oyetola v Adeleke, going here and there and were more in particular about attacking the Kwankwassiya supporters. How can you award the winner to Gawuna who was not a Party. You rather award same to the Petitioner (another preliminary mistake)

Lastly, the issue of membership have been handled by higher Courts, in the spirit of stare decisis the tribunal had no rights whatsoever to sit on appeal against it. Definitely will be killed.

On the issue of unstamped, unsigned ballot papers NNPP went to sleep, called one witness when it was clear that APC did the same thing. INEC now helped them by as well going into trance with their replies.

On the issue at Appeal, the deduction of votes will be sustained, and perhaps inconclusive. It is the SC that will bail out Yusuf if they play their cards well.

The Court works with evidence and facts!

ValarDoharis:
How?

Ikaeniyan0:
APC will still win because APC votes were also cancelled at the local government.