Controversial politician, Buba Galadima has incurred the wrath of the Kano State Government after he called for the Supreme Court to sack Governor Abdullahi Ganduje.
Galadima, a former Chairman of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), claimed that Ganduje’s election witnessed similar incidents as that of Emeka Ihedioha, who was recently sacked as Governor of Imo State by the apex court.
He claimed that technicalities applied by the Supreme Court to declare Sen. Hope Uzodinma as Imo governor tied to the cancellation of votes that allegedly belonged to Abba Kabiru Yusuf of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, he said, “Exactly what happened in Kano happened in Imo and so, if an election has to be cancelled, it has to be at the polling units level according to the Supreme Court ruling.
“But in Kano, votes were not cancelled at the polling units or ward level, but at the local government level. So, it goes without saying that Ganduje is gone, and anything to the contrary, Nigeria will see the fire.”
Responding, Coordinator of Governor Ganduje’s legal team, Mohammad Abdullahi Lawan, said that Galadima was displaying ignorance of the law.
According to him, Ganduje’s case before the Supreme Court bears no correlation with that of Ihedioha.
Lawan explained that Ihedioha’s case showed glaring evidence of cancellation of votes by persons other than the presiding officers, but nothing of the sort happened in Kano.
“In the former (Ihedioha case), while there was glaring evidence of cancellation of results by officials other than the presiding officers, in Governor Ganduje’s case, there was no evidence of such cancellation by officials order than the presiding officers.
“Instead, there was proven evidence in the Governor Ganduje case, that the cancellation of some of the 207 polling units were carried out by the respective presiding officers of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the polling units, as was clearly depicted in the numerous Form ECG 40s tendered and admitted in evidence without any objections by the petitioners.
“Again, in the Ganduje case, INEC failed to collate the results of 62 polling units in Gama ward comprising over 48,000 registered voters in an election with a lead margin of only 26,000 votes!
“What is worse is that the disruption of the collation of the results was caused by the PDP agent, one Dr. Yakasai, who testified as PW30.
“He admitted that while the results were being collated, a commotion arose and he took away the original results of INEC and hid in a room for over one hour! In the end, only 12 of those results were tendered in court,” Lawan explained.