Politics

Tribunal affirms Kefas as duly elected gov of Taraba

Published

7 months ago

September 30, 2023

The Taraba State Governorship Election Tribunal sitting in Jalingo on Saturday, affirmed Governor Agbu Kefas of the Peoples Democratic Party is the duly elected governor of the state.

The decision was reached by the three man panel of justices which dismissed the petition filed by the candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) Prof. Yahaya Sani, who had challenged the election victory of Kefas as lacking in merit.

Sani and the NNPP had filed a petition against the victory of Kefas in the March 18 governorship election on the grounds of corrupt practices, non-compliant to the Electoral Act of 2022, over voting, mutilation of result sheets and alleged violence in polling units.

The NNPP candidate had also argued that the governorship election as one filled with irregularities, citing that the alleged failure of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BIVAS) machine to accredit voters during the election “was a clear indication that results declared from some of the polling units were not authentic”.

However, the tribunal ruled that the petitioners’ claims of scoring the majority of lawful votes cast was inconsistent as one of his grounds of asking that the same election be declared invalid was the same he claimed to have won.

In its ruling, the panel said one cannot “place something on nothing and expect it to stand.”

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