. As police averted plans to raze Government House
The Supreme Court, yesterday, reserved judgment in the Kano State governorship legal battle, which has kept Governor Abba Yusuf on edge.
Meanwhile, Kano Commissioner of Police (CP), Mohammed Gumel, has narrated how his men uncovered moves by unscrupulous elements to set the Government House ablaze ahead of the judgment.
The appeal filed by the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and its candidate, Governor Yusuf, has the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Nasiru Gawuna, as respondents.
At yesterday’s proceedings, Wole Olanipekun asked the Supreme Court to set aside the decision of the Court of Appeal and tribunal.
Olanipekun, specifically, pleaded with the five-man apex court panel headed by Justice John Inyang Okoro to determine whether or not the guidelines of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would be a basis for nullifying the election a candidate who won by a margin of over 100,000 votes.
The senior lawyer argued that this is the first time in the annals of electoral jurisprudence that an election was nullified on the grounds that ballot papers were not signed or stamped at the back.
He said INEC guidelines do not envisage that the courts would nullify an election on the basis of INEC’s purportedly failure to stamp ballot papers on the back.
The governor’s legal team maintained that its client’s membership of the NNPP is a pre-election matter and that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to entertain the matter.
“The judgment of the lower courts is very unfair to the appellant, and we urge your lordships to upturn it.
“Nobody raised the legality or illegality of the ballots. They tendered the ballot from the bar. Nobody spoke about it. The ballot papers are legal because they were issued by INEC officials,” he argued.
But in a counter-argument, APC counsel, my Akin Olujimi maintained that the Electoral Act mandates INEC presiding officers to sign the back of ballot papers after the conclusion of the election to make them legal.
Olujimi said the findings of the tribunal were simply that the ballot papers were not signed at the back and not dated and proceeded to cancel the election where the ballots were used.
He said electoral irregularities were manifest on the disputed ballot papers.
On the issue of party membership, Olujimi argued that the NNPP membership register did not show the name of Yusuf on it.
INEC counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud, supported the arguments of Olanipekun, adding that the decisions of the lower courts were flawed.
The Kano CP disclosed that the governorship case triggered untold tension and put security on edge in the last two months.
Gumel made the revelation, yesterday, to media executives at the command headquarters, Bompia, Kano.
Although, the CP did not mention those involved and whether or not the planned dastardly act was politically-motivated, he hinted that those arrested were still ongoing interrogation.
The police boss emphasised the critical role of the media in crisis management and appealed to media executives to consider the volatility of Kano in the reportage of the Supreme Court judgment.
He urged the media to demonstrate reasonable amount of patriotism in ensuring peace and desist from acts capable of frustrating the security architecture of Kano.
