The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has dismissed the Nasarawa State Gubernatorial Election Petition Tribunal judgement sacking Governor Abdullahi Sule.
The appellate court also affirmed the governor’s victory in the March 18 gubernatorial election.
In a verdict delivered on October 2, the tribunal led by Justice Esther Ajayi sacked Governor Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and declared that based on evidence from the various polling units, David Ombugadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had the majority of valid votes in the election.
Unsatisfied with the tribunal’s judgement, Governor Sule approached the Court of Appeal.
On Thursday, a three-man panel of justices led by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam ruled that the tribunal erred in its judgement when it concluded that Governor Sule did not win the majority of lawful votes cast in the election.
The appellate court held that the tribunal was legally bound to act on witness statements filed along with the petition or front-loaded within 21 days stipulated by law.
The court said the tribunal acted in grave error in relying on the evidence of eight of the witnesses that were produced by the PDP candidate, whose witness statements on oath were not front-loaded alongside the petition.
According to the court, no petition can lawfully be amended outside the 21 days allowed by law as wrongly done by the tribunal.
The court stressed that under Section 285(5) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, section 132(7) of the Electoral Act 2022 and Paragraphs 4(5) (6) and 14(2) of the First Schedule to the Electoral Act, every written statement on oath must be filed alongside the petition, within the statutorily allocated time.
“Where a trial court admitted and acted on an illegally inadmissible evidence, it is the duty of the appellate court to ensure that such illegally inadmissible evidence are expunged.
“A court of law is only allowed to act on legally admissible evidence. If documents are unlawfully allowed by a trial court, the appellate court is duty bound to exclude the documents and discountenance the evidence,” the court said in the lead judgement delivered by Justice Onyemenam.
The appellate court proceeded to strike out all the evidence and exhibits that were tendered before the tribunal by the eight witnesses.
The Court of Appeal also held that the tribunal denied the governor a fair hearing by not considering and making findings on the issues of jurisdiction raised at the hearing of the petition.
Also, the court ruled that the tribunal was wrong to have deducted 1,868 votes from the governor’s votes based on the allegation of over-voting in four polling units.
“A party alleging over-voting must present voter registers in the affected polling units, BVAS machine, and Form EC8. The petitioners merely dumped their evidence on the tribunal without showing how over-voting occurred,” the judge said.