INEC Ask Supreme Court To Dismiss Binani’s ‘Vague’ Application Against Governor Fintiri’s Re-election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the appeal entered by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Aisha Dahiru Binani, against the re-election of Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State.

INEC’S counsel, Abubakar Ahmad, urged the apex court to uphold Fintiri’s re-election.

THE WHISTLER recalls that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja had affirmed Fintiri’s re-election while dismissing the appeal by Binani.

The appeal court also ordered Binani and APC to pay the cost of N1 million to the governor and his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for filing a “vague” application.

Binani’s appeal was against the judgment of the Adamawa State governorship election petition tribunal which affirmed Fintiri’s re-election.

THE WHISTLER reported that Binani had on April 16 accepted the result wrongly declared in her favour by Yunusa Hudu, the former Adamawa Resident Electoral Commission (REC), even though he announced her winner without reading out the actual scores for each candidate as enshrined in the Electoral Act 2022.

Yunusa had walked into the collation center after the supplementary election was suspended and announced Binani as winner, drawing widespread criticism.

But INEC’s leadership declared the announcement a nullity.

After its supplementary election, INEC announced Fintiri as the winner of the polls with 430,861 votes while Binani of the APC polled 398,788 votes.

Binani then approached the tribunal citing allegations of corrupt practices and non-compliance to the Electoral Act.

But the Tribunal dismissed Binani’s petition saying “the petitioners woefully failed to establish their allegations of non-compliance with the Electoral Act and prove their case with cogent, credible and satisfactory evidence.”

Binani’s counsel, Chief Akin Olujimi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, in 27 grounds of appeal, asked the Appeal Court to declare that the lower court erred.

A three-man panel of the court led by Justice Tunde Awotoye held that the appellant’s brief was invalid and is likely to be struck out for being incompetent.

Awotoye further held that the appellants filed an incompetent record of appeal contrary to the practice directions of the court and tried to make the appeal court speculate.

The appeal court also held that the appellant’s allegations of corrupt practices were not backed by sufficient evidence and were rightly struck out by the Tribunal.

“The evidence of the appellants at the Tribunal was hearsay evidence which deserves to be ignored,”

“I hold that this appeal lacks merit and is dismissed,” the court held while approving the cost of N500,000 in favour of each of the second and third respondents (Fintiri and PDP).

At the hearing on Monday, counsel for Binani, Olujimi urged the apex court to hold that the declaration of winner as made by the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Hudu ought to stand because he is an official of INEC.

He continued that the main issue the lower courts dismissed his case was that the REC was not a returning officer.

He said by Section 149 of the Electoral Act, any official of INEC can announce the winner of an election.

For Ahmad, he asked the apex court to dismiss the appeal and uphold the submissions of the governor’s legal team.

Dodo, the governor’s lawyer asked the apex court to dismiss the appeal for lacking in merit.

He said REC has no business with the declaration of results as held by lower courts, adding it is the returning officer that declares who won an election.

“Judgment reserved,” Justice Okoro held.