set back as the Governorship and National Elections Petition Tribunal
in Taraba sacked the Senator representing Central Senatorial
District, Sen. Bashir Marafa.
In a three hour judgment read by one of judges, Mr Justice Suleiman Yusuf the Tribunal explained that the election of Bashir cannot stand because he did not score the lawful
majority votes in the March 28 election.
The petitioners in the case file, the All Progressives Congress, candidate, Alhaji Yusuf Abubakar has proven his
case beyond reasonable doubt and therefore should be returned as the
candidate who scored the majority lawful votes at the polls.
It said that the petitioners whose main area of complaint was the non
inclusion of results in some 16 polling units in Kaigamma Ward of
Bali Local Government in the results announced by INEC and the
swapping of the results of Social Democratic Party candidate with the
one of the PDP in Takalafiya Ward of the same area was also
substantially proven.
The Tribunal said the alleged cancellation of results at collation
centres after the presiding officer had announced same result at the polling
unit contravened the electoral law while the non inclusion of the
results of 16 polling units where elections were credibly conducted
and announced was also against the law.
The panel declared that after re-collation of the results, the APC
candidate, Yusuf Abubakar scored 66,097 votes, Marafa Bashir of PDP
scored 64,356 votes while Abubakar Tutare scored 33,489 votes.
The court therefore directed INEC to issue the certificate of return to
Yusuf of the APC as the duly elected candidate who scored the lawful
majority votes at the March 28t National Assembly election.
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