Just in: Kano Election Tribunal sacks governor Abba Kabir Yusuf
The Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal has thrown out Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, confirming Nasiru Gawuna, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, as the winner of the March 18 poll.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Yusuf, who ran on the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), as the winner of the election after a keenly contested political exercise in the northern Nigerian state.
However, after hearing the petitions on Wednesday, the three-member panel ordered the revocation of the certificate of return issued to Yusuf of the NNPP and directed that a certificate of return be presented to Gawuna.
The court subtracted 165,663 votes from Yusuf’s total as invalid votes, emphasising that the affected ballots were neither stamped nor signed and thus considered void.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission announced the candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Yusuf Abba Kabir, as the winner of March governorship election in the state.
According to the results declared by the Returning Officer for the Kano State Governorship election, Professor Ahmed Ibrahim, the NNPP candidate polled 1,019,602 votes to defeat his closest rival, Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress, who polled 890,705 votes.
The outcome of the poll triggered political unrest in the state.
The then governor of Kano State who is now the APC chairman, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, declared a dawn-to-dusk curfew in the state to forestall breakdown of law and order.
