Tribunal Affirms Tambuwal's Election as Sokoto Governor

The Sokoto State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, on Wednesday affirmed the declaration and return of Aminu Tambuwal as the duly elected governor of the state.

This followed the dismissal of the petition filed against Tambuwal's election by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ahmed Aliyu, for being incompetent and lacking merit.

Aliyu and his party, the APC had in the petition challenged the return of Tambuwal as the duly-elected governor of Sokoto state.

The petition was predicated mainly on alleged over-voting and non+compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2010 by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the governorship election in the state.

However, the three-man panel led by Justice Abbas Abdullahi in the unanimous judgement held that the petition lacked merit. 

In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Abbas Abdullahi, the panel held that the petitioners failed to prove allegations of over-voting and other electoral matters.

The panel in dismissing the panel held that relevant witnesses were not called while those who testified based their evidence on hearsay.

Specifically,:the tribunal held that witnesses' statements recorded in Hausa and translated into English language by an interpreter were not tendered, adding that their evidence during cross-examination was at variance with pleadings in the translated statement.

Worse still, the tribunal chairman held that the witnesses discredited their own evidence when they admitted during hearing that they were seeing their witness deposition in court for the first time.

"The issue at stake here is whether the petitioners' witnesses made their statement in Hausa language and the effect of the failure by the petitioners to attach the ones in Hausa Language with those translated into English Language is fatal to the case of the petitioners", the tribunal held.

The tribunal also held that the witnesses admitted signing the result sheets from the polling units to the ward level as agents of the petitioners voluntarily as none of them claimed to have done so under duress.

Justice Abdullahi, in the judgment, rejected some of the documentary evidence tendered by the petitioners on the grounds that the documents were not properly certified as required by law.

Besides, the tribunal held that the APC governorship candidate and his party failed to substantiate their allegations of over-voting in the election because of their failure to tender the voter register used during the election.

Although the petitioners pleaded voter register, the tribunal, however, said there was no attempt to link the register with the result sheets that were tendered during the hearing.

Having resolved all issues against the petitioners due to the inability to substantiate their allegations as required by law, the tribunal said that it had no choice than to dismiss the petition for being incompetent and lacking in merit.

The March 9 governorship election was declared inconclusive after 75,403 votes were canceled, a figure that was higher than the 3,413 votes margin that governor Tambuwal led the other candidates with. 

Consequently, a re-run election was conducted on March 23, wherein Tambuwal emerged as the winner with a slim margin of 342 votes.

Not satisfied with the outcome, Aliyu approached the tribunal to nullify the declaration of Tambuwal as the winner of the poll.

The petitioners prayed the tribunal to either declare the election inconclusive or to order INEC to conduct fresh polls at polling units where results were canceled.