Nasarawa gov’ship: Court of Appeal reserves judgment

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has reserved judgment in an appeal by Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State challenging the nullification of his election.

A three-member panel of justices headed by Justice U. Onyemenam on Wednesday told parties involved that the date for judgment would be communicated.

Governor Sule of the All Progressives Court (APC) had challenged the majority decision by a tribunal nullifying his election in favour of David Ombugadu of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

During the proceedings, counsel to Sule, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), who brought five motions to challenge the appeal, asked the appellate court to upturn the judgment of the tribunal and allow the appeal of his client.

Olanipekun argued that the tribunal refused to take the submissions of their witnesses during the tribunal hearing, adding that the BVAS data were merely dumped before the tribunal without being considered as evidence.

In his response, after adopting his processes, Kanu Agabi, counsel to Ombugadu and the PDP, urged the court to dismiss the appeal against the tribunal judgment stating that their evidence are merely documentary.

On the issue of BVAS, Agabi argued that it was sufficiently demonstrated in the tribunal as demanded by law, with the print out from the machine shown, against the argument that they were merely dumped without being analysed.

Agabi who referred the court to the judgment of the tribunal argued that in delivering judgment, the lower court painstakingly gave a breakdown of how it arrived at its decision.

The appeal followed the judgement of the Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal, which in a split decision on October 2 nullified Sule’s election and upheld Ombugadu as the winner.

Sule polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent, Ombugadu, who secured 283,016 votes.