UPDATED: Confusion, as Tribunal upholds Gov Uba Sani’s election in Kaduna

The Kaduna State governorship election petition tribunal on Thursday upheld Governor Uba Sani’s victory in the March 18 election in the state.

This came after earlier reports said the tribunal judges which had delivered the ruling via zoom declared the Match 2023 election in the state as inconclusive.

The three-man panel of the Tribunal had in a split 2-1 decision declared a rerun election in 24 polling units in seven wards of four local government areas consisting of 16,300 registered voters.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Sani of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election after he polled 730,001 votes to defeat his closest rival, Isah Ashiru of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 719, 196 votes in the exercise.

Ashiru and his party however approached the tribunal to nullify the APC candidate’s victory over alleged fraud.

The petitioners claimed that there were massive irregularities and manipulation of results in favour of Governor Sani in some local government areas by INEC.

READ ALSO: APC’s Uba Sani elected as Kaduna governor

In a 2:1 judgement, the three-member panel led by Justice Victor Oviawie dismissed the petition for lack of merit.

The panel held that the pre-hearing notice was filed out of time and therefore deemed to be abandoned.

The tribunal, however, declared that if the petition had not been dismissed for lack of merit, it would have ordered a supplementary election in 22 polling units within 90 days of the judgement.

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