The Court of Appeal in Abuja has affirmed the election of Ahmadu Fintiri of the People’s Democratic Party in the March 18 governorship election held in Adamawa State after dismissing the appeal of Aishatu Binani of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for lacking merit.
In the judgment prepared by Justice Tunde Awotoye and read by Justice Ebiowei Tobi on behalf of a three-member panel, the Appellate Court awarded the cost of N500,000 in favour of Fintiri and the PDP against Binani.
This judgment affirms the decision of the Tribunal on October 28 which dismissed the petition of Binani for failing to prove her allegations of over-voting by not tendering documents to prove her case faulting the outcome of the election.
The Appellate Court frowned at the premature announcement of the election outcome by the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Hudu Ari, adding that Binani’s appeal was plagued by several demons.
The Court stressed in strong terms that the action of the Resident Electoral Commissioner in announcing Binani as winner was illegal and an action outside of that prescribed by law as only the Returning Officer has such power.
It adds that the announcement of the result of the supplementary election by Hudu Ari while collation was still underway was unacceptable and hailed the Tribunal was right not to give relevance to the controversial action of the REC.
Justice Ebiowei Tobi in his reading of the judgment further said the “REC was on his own” and that INEC is not expected to take Panadol for his headache.
In the unanimous judgment, the Appellate Court holds that the Binani did a poor job of seeking to nullify the electoral outcome on grounds of non-compliance and corrupt practices by calling only three witnesses in an election that held in 14,104 polling units.
The Court further added that the witnesses couldn’t prove that the APC candidate got the majority of lawful votes cast as they were not polling unit agents but campaign coordinators and affiliates of the legal team involved in the matter.
Binani’s legal team, the Court therefore maintains, merely dumped documents without giving life to same as they were not the authors. The Court says the documents are meant to be evidence during hearing of the appeal, and that the failure of the witnesses to do the simple task of identifying the documents makes the action of the legal team amount to dumping of documents on the court.
