NNPP Drags INEC To Court Over Senatorial Election In Nasarawa

The New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) Senatorial candidate in Nasarawa West, Wakili Kabiru-Muhammad in the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections, has dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the Election Tribunal a week after the election.

The NNPP senatorial candidate decided to sue INEC because his party’s logo was not found on the ballot papers during the election.

Since NNPP’s logo was missing from INEC’s ballot papers, the senatorial race in the Nasarawa West senatorial district became a race between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

At the end of the process, INEC declared Aliyu-Wadada of the SDP winner of the contest with 96,488 votes against 47,717 votes recorded for Shehu Tukur of the APC.

Kabiru-Muhammad believes he would have won the election if NNPP’s logo was not excluded from the ballot papers. Hence, he sued the election umpire for misrepresenting his party’s logo on the ballots.

The first and second defendants in the case are INEC and Ahmed Aliyu-Wadada of the SDP, who was declared the winner of the election.

After arguing his petition before the Election Tribunal sitting in the state capital, Lafia, on Saturday, Kabiru-Muhammad told reporters that INEC violated both the Election Act of 2022 and the 1999 Constitution for omitting his party’s logo.

Hence, he urged the Tribunal to redress the “irregularities” of the February 26 senatorial election in his constituency.

While all parties involved in the case await the judgment of the Tribunal, Kabiru-Muhammad urged his supporters to remain calm.