After observing the trend of judgements that have emanated from tribunals hearing petitions against the 2023 elections, the Ahmadiyya Automobile Multipurpose Cooperative, Kano, has expressed concerns over the judges interpretations of the law on the cases brought before the court.
The group argued that some of the judgements delivered by the tribunal did not consider the electorates who made their choices known through casting ballots for their preferred candidate during the poll.
They appealed that the tribunal should review the judgements that would be brought before it properly, to avoid affirming a candidate that was not duly elected by the people.
The group raised this concern yesterday during a press briefing tagged “The state of the nation’s democracy, constitution and the independence of the Judiciary”, held in Kano metropolis.
Addressing newsmen, the chairman, Ahmadiyya Automobile Multipurpose Cooperative Society, Aliyu Abdu, described the development as one that needs to be addressed to protect the country’s democracy.
While expressing the group’s displeasure at the deteriorating state of the nation’s rule and law, he urged the Federal and State Governments to urgently deepen independence of democracy in Nigeria.
While citing cases, Abdu said: “The judges assigned to the Kano gubernatorial tribunal to consider outcome of the 2023 poll, in their wisdom delivered their ruling, sacked the State Governor, Abba Yusuf, who contested the poll on the platform of New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and declared the candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) Dr. Nasir Gawuna, winner of the march 18th governorship poll”.
He stated that the judgement delivered required that the Appellate Court review the entire case holistically to set the record straight.
Abdu added that the Kano electorates have made their choices during the poll and their views should be upheld by the court.
“A reasonable person would see it as a statistical impossibility that all the alleged votes come from only NNPP and none from APC. Knowing that the APC was the party in power, it is also troublesome that the suspected vote inflation happened right before the APC agents at the polling units.
“Assuming this is all true, deducting 165,663 votes puts Abba Kabir at 853,939 and Nasir Gawuna, who got 890,705 votes. “We expect that the tribunal would have ruled that the election was inconclusive considering that the 36,766 margin is less than the number of electorate from the polling units where the elections were cancelled.
“With this judgement, we inclined and saw the tribunal verdict as a Mop job”, he added.
