JUST IN: Supreme Court Sacks Shekarau, Affirms NNPP Candidate As Senator-Elect

The Supreme Court has removed Senator Ibrahim Shekarau as the winner of the Kano Central Senatorial district election.

The apex court in a judgment delivered on Friday affirmed Rufai Hanga as the rightful candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) and winner of the senatorial seat.

Shekarau, who initially won the NNPP senatorial primary for the constituency, defected to the PDP before the elections.

However, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) insisted Shekarau was the recognised NNPP candidate even though the party replaced him with Hanga.

Incidentally, the NNPP won the Kano Central Senate Seat polling 456,787 votes to defeat the candidate of the APC, Abdulkarim Zaura, who got 168,677 votes and INEC declared Shekarau as the winner of the election.

However, in a unanimous judgement delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, the five-member panel of the court faulted INEC’s refusal to replace Shekarau with Hanga after the former defected to the PDP before the election.

The apex court upheld the two earlier concurrent judgments by the Federal High Court and Court of Appeal that affirmed Hanga as the authentic candidate of NNPP.

It is worthwhile to note that Shekarau was absent when INEC presented certificates of return to senators-elect.

Shekarau’s spokesman, Sule Y. Sule said his principal chose to reject the certificate as a matter of principle and personal conviction.