Nasarawa Guber Poll: Crunch Time For APC, PDP As Appeal Court Rules Thursday, Nov 23

Governor Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will further know his fate politically on Thursday, November 23 as the Appeal Court sitting in Abuja is set to rule on the appeal over the Nasarawa State governorship election dispute.

The Governor had approached the Appellate Court after rejecting the judgment delivered by the State Governorship Election Tribunal that sacked him and declared David Ombugadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the authentic winner of the March 18, 2023 election.

Ombugadu had gone to the Tribunal to challenge the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s declaration of Sule as the winner of the poll. According to the electoral umpire’s calculations, Governor Sule polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent, who secured 283,016 votes.

However, in a split decision on October 2, the Tribunal nullified Governor Sule’s election and upheld Ombugadu as validly elected.

But in approaching the Appellate Court, Governor Sule, through his counsel, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), prayed that the Tribunal judgment should be upturned while upholding his grounds of appeal.

According to Olanipekun, the Tribunal refused to take the submissions of their witnesses during its hearing, adding that the BVAS data were merely dumped before the Tribunal without being considered as evidence.

In his response, after adopting his processes, Kanu Agabi, counsel to Ombugadu and the PDP, urged the court to dismiss the appeal against the tribunal judgment, stating that their evidence is merely documentary.

Addressing the issue of BVAS, Agabi argued that the PDP candidate sufficiently demonstrated it at the Tribunal as demanded by law, with the printout from the machine shown, against the argument that they were merely dumped without being analysed.

Agabi who referred the court to the judgment of the Tribunal argued that in delivering judgment, the lower court painstakingly gave a breakdown of how it arrived at its decision.

With all the parties making their submissions, the Appeal Court had reserved judgment to a later date that was to be communicated to both the defendants and the appellants

Consequently, an official notice cited by Forefront News on Wednesday indicated that the Court of Appeal has fixed Thursday, November 23 to deliver its judgment on the appeal in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).