BREAKING: Supreme Court Delays Judgment On Kano Guber, Ganduje, Abba To Know Fate Monday

Judgement on the Kano Governorship election appeal has been fixed for January 20 by the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice of Nigeria, Tanko Muhammed, who led a seven-man panel of Justices of the apex court fixed the date on Tuesday in Abuja at the resumed hearing of the appeal filed by the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the March 9 poll, Abba Yusuf.

The court fixed Monday next week to decide the fate of the appeal after listening to arguments by the counsels representing the appellant and the respondents in the suit.

The respondents are Governor Ganduje, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Adegboyega Awomolo represented Yusuf at the apex court.

 Awomolo had earlier 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.

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.

The senior lawyer described the action of the electoral officer as ultra vires, null and void, but his submissions were swiftly countered by the counsel representing INEC, Ahmed Raji.

Raji, who is also a senior advocate, asked the court to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the allegations were false.

Rather, he explained that the true situation was that agents of the appellant prevented the collation of results from the said polling units.

The lawyer said there was no evidence to prove the cancellation of results by the returning officer as claimed by the appellant.

Counsel representing Governor Ganduje, Offiong Offiong in his argument, aligned himself with the submissions of the INEC lawyer.

He stressed 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.

Offiong 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.

He submitted that allowing the appeal of the PDP candidate would amount to sanctioning electoral violence.