Tribunal Dismisses APDA Petition against Mattawalle's Election as Zamfara Governor

The Zamfara State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja on Monday dismissed the petition filed by the Advanced People’s Democratic Alliance (APDA) and its governorship candidate against the election of Governor Bello Mattawalle of Zamfara State.

The three-member panel in a unanimous decision dismissed the petition for lacking merit.

Respondents in the petition marked EPT/ZM/GOV/2019 are the governor, his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The petitioners had approached the tribunal to nullify the declaration of Mattawalle as winner of the March 9 governorship election on the ground that he did not win majority lawful votes cast at the election.

However, in their judgment delivered by the Chairman of the panel, Justice Binta Zubair, the tribunal in upholding the election of Mattawalle, relied on the Supreme Court pronouncement of May 24, 2019, wherein the apex court held that votes cast for candidates who ought not to have participated in an election are wasted and cannot be used in determining the outcome of an election.

Justice Zubairu held that by implication, the votes cast for Mattawalle and his party, the PDP, are the lawful votes as far as the March 9 governorship election in Zamfara State is concerned.

The tribunal also disagreed with the petitioners that Muttawalle did not win votes in two-third of the local government areas of the state.

It had earlier in a ruling dismissed the claim by Takori that the PDP did not conduct any primaries and that Muttawalle was not duly sponsored by his party, and therefore, was not qualified to contest for the governorship election in the first place.

According to the panel, the issue of nomination and sponsorship of a candidate is the sole responsibility of the party and also a pre-election matter of which the tribunal has no jurisdiction to entertain.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Muktar Idris of All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of Zamfara State governorship election held on March 9, 2019.

Announcing the result, the Returning Officer, Prof. Kabir Bala, said, Muktar secured 534,541 votes out of the 810,782 votes cast across the 14 local government areas of the state.

INEC said Matawalle of PDP scored 189,452 to emerge second, while Senator Saidu Dansadau of National Rescue Movement (NRM) scored 15,177 votes, and Sani Abdullahi of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) got 3,865 votes.

INEC said a total of 1,717,128 voters were registered in the state of which 823,294 were accredited for the election.

However, following the May 25 judgment of the Supreme Court which had sacked all candidates of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the National Assembly, governorship and state House of Assembly elections in Zamfara State, INEC then declared Mattawalle, who came second in the election, as winner of the governorship election.

The apex court had nullified the election of Idris of the APC on the grounds that he was not qualified to contest the election in the first place having not emerged from a credible primary election as candidate of the APC as required by law.