Kano Election: Court fixes date to decide fate of Ganduje, Abba Yusuf

January 20 was the date the Supreme Court has set aside to deliver judgment on an appeal from the governorship election in Kano State.
According to Channels Television, a seven-man panel of justices of the apex court led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, fixed the date on Tuesday in Abuja at the hearing of the appeal filed by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the March 9 poll, Abba Yusuf.
The respondents are Governor Ganduje, the All Progressives Congress, and the Independent National Electoral Commission and Yusuf was represented at the apex court by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Adegboyega Awomolo.
Earlier, Awomolo asked the court to allow his client’s appeal, including setting aside the order of the lower court and grant all the prayers of the appellant and he based his argument on the ground that the Returning Officer for the governorship election in Kano unilaterally cancelled the results from 207 polling units.
Awolomo further described the action of the electoral officer as ultra vires, null and void, but his submissions were rejected by the counsel representing INEC, Ahmed Raji.
Raji (SAN) asked the court to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the allegations were false and he explained that the true situation was that agents of the appellant prevented the collation of results from the said polling units.
He said there was no evidence to prove the cancellation of results by the returning officer as claimed by the appellant.
In his argument, the counsel representing Governor Ganduje, Offiong Offiong, aligned himself with the submissions of the INEC lawyer.
Offiong acknowledged that the final results submitted by the returning officer did not contain results from the 207 polling units in dispute, and there was no way he could have cancelled results he did not have.
He further informed the court that an agent of the appellant hijacked results of 62 polling units which he later presented at the Police Headquarters in Kano and he stated that allowing the appeal of the PDP candidate would amount to sanctioning electoral violence.