Kaduna: Appeal Court reaffirms El-Rufai’s victory.

Sola Ojo, Kaduna.

The appellate court upheld the judgement of the election petition tribunal which had earlier affirmed El-Rufai, the candidate of the All Progressive Congress as winner of the March 9 election in the State.

The Independent National Electoral Commission had declared the governor the winner of the March 9th, gubernatorial election in the state.

But, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Isa Ashiru and his party PDP approached the Kaduna State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal where the tribunal dismissed his petition for lacking in merit.

Ashiru and his party had sought the tribunal to cancel a total of 515,951 votes, which they claimed were unlawfully added to the APC as well as124,210 unlawful votes, which they said were added to the PDP, through wrong or double entry on the result sheets by INEC.

Again, the PDP candidate went ahead to file an appeal against the ruling of the tribunal declaring the governor as winner of the poll in the state.

However,  the five-man panel of the Appeal Court of judges upheld the decision of the tribunal and declared El-Rufai as the dully elected governor of Kaduna State in that poll.

In the unanimous judgement delivered by Justice Olumuyiwa Aburu, the appellate court upheld the judgement of the tribunal which dismissed the petition of    the candidate of the PDP.

The Appellate Court aligned with the tribunal judgement which ruled that the PDP candidate could not prove his allegations of massive rigging and other electoral irregularities leveled against the governor at the poll.

However, the same court has sacked lawmaker representing Lere Federal Constituency (APC), Engr. Suleiman Lere and returned Muhammed Lawal Rabiu (PDP) as elected lawmaker to represent the constituency.