Sule Vs Ombugadu: Appeal Court Begins Judgment On Nasarawa Gov’ship Election Dispute

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has begun judgment in the Nasarawa State governorship election dispute.

The justices of the appellate court have started reading the ruling, while protesters have occupied a major section of the court road, singing and wielding placards.

Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Governor Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the March election, but David Ombugadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) approached the tribunal.

According to INEC, Sule polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent, who secured 283,016 votes.

However, in a split decision on October 2, the tribunal nullified Sule’s election and upheld Ombugadu as the winner.

But Sule, through his counsel, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), asked the appellate court to upturn the tribunal’s judgment and allow his own appeal.

Olanipekun argued that the tribunal refused to take the submissions of their witnesses during the tribunal hearing, adding that the BVAS data were merely dumped before the tribunal without being considered as evidence.

In his response, after adopting his processes, Kanu Agabi, counsel to Ombugadu and the PDP, urged the court to dismiss the appeal against the tribunal judgment, stating that their evidence is merely documentary.

On the issue of BVAS, Agabi argued that it was sufficiently demonstrated in the tribunal as demanded by law, with the printout from the machine shown, against the argument that they were merely dumped without being analysed.

Agabi, who referred the court to the tribunal’s judgment, argued that in delivering judgment, the lower court painstakingly gave a breakdown of how it arrived at its decision.

The appeal court had reserved judgment.