INTIMIDATION? Gov Yusuf’s supporters protest in Ibadan, Kano

Discontent continues to grow over the judgment of the Court of Appeal ruling that sacked Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf with some of his supporters taking to the streets in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital and in the Kano metropolis.

The protesters in what many consider attempts to intimidate the judiciary mostly included women supporters of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) who took the protest to the state’s Police Command headquarters

In Ibadan on Sunday, supporters of Governor Yusuf converged at the Lekan Salami Sports Complex to pray and thereafter staged a peaceful protest to press home their demands for the maintenance of the status quo in Kano State.

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The supporters, some of who carried placards, with inscriptions such as, ‘Justice for Kano,’ ‘Kano Abba Muka Zaba,’ ‘Abba is our Choice,’ and ‘Kano voted for Abba’, warned the judiciary against any act capable of igniting a crisis in Kano and other parts of the country.

The Special Adviser to Governor Yusuf on Wildlife Preservation, Ahmad Sawaba, while speaking with newsmen in Ibadan, called on the Supreme Court to take a careful look at the judgments of the courts and do justice.

He said: “The people of Kano State voted for Yusuf, not any other candidate and as a result, the judiciary should respect the wishes of the electorate. The discrepancy between the Justices’ pronouncement in the court and the Certified True Copy is enough evidence that something is amiss.

“The Supreme Court judges are highly respected. Our hope is that they will justify the confidence reposed in them.”

In Kano, the NNPP women supporters took their agitation to the police headquarters in Kano to protest what they called an injustice by the appellate court.

Defiling the warning by the Kano State Police Command against unauthorised protest in the state, the women in their hundreds were clad in red attires, carried placards with diverse inscriptions, and marched from the residence of the party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election Rabiu Kwankwaso to the police headquarters on Sunday.

They called for justice, insisting that Governor Yusuf won the March governorship election in the state.

But a legal practitioner, Ezechi Edwin noted that such protests were antics of politicians to intimidate the judiciary, and force the judges’s hands.

“All these are mere intimidation tactics. Why will Nigerian politicians never honourably accept defeat. Must the country burn because you lost election, or because the court said you lost?

If you have evidence of wrongdoing, there are civilized procedures and institutions to rectify them. After-all, it’s the same politicians who are weakening the institutions so they can always get their way”, he lamented.

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