The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has fixed Monday to hear the appeal filed by Governor Abba Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party challenging the nullification of his election victory by the Kano State election petition tribunal.
This was contained in a notice of the suit with case no CA/KN/EP/GOV/KAN/34/2023.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared the governor the winner of the March 18 election after scoring 1,019,602 votes against his opponent, Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress, who secured 890,705 votes.
The tribunal, however, nullified Mr Yusuf’s election after holding that 165,663 of his votes were invalid because they were not signed or stamped by INEC.
After the tribunal deducted the invalid votes from his total, his votes were reduced to 853,939, which was over 30,000 votes less than Mr Gawuna’s figure.
The court, therefore, declared the APC candidate the winner of the governorship election and ordered the INEC to withdraw Mr Yusuf’s certificate of return and give it to Mr Gawuna.
Not satisfied with the judgement, the governor and the NNPP appealed the tribunal’s judgement, praying for its dismissal.