The Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has rejected the judgment on Monday, of the Election Petition Tribunal which upturned the election of Adam Rufai, its candidate in the recent Patigi bye-election into the vacant seat in the House of Assembly.
Chairman of the tribunal, Aminat Aliyu, had declared Hon Salihu Yahaya Mohammed of the Peoples Democratic Party winner of the exercise held in March 2020 consequent upon a petition filed by the party.
While delivering judgement on the petition, the Chairman said, “Adam’s name on the EC9 form was different from the one on his primary school certificate, declaration of age, voter card, and in the letter forwarded to the INEC on January 15, 2019.”
However, the Kwara State chapter of APC had rejected the decision of the Tribunal and vowed to appeal the judgement, saying it was "a judicial subversion of people’s mandate"
In a statement by its publicity secretary, Alhaji Folaranmi Aro, the party said "the judgment was based on the difference between ‘Adam’ and ‘Adama’ on the certificate of the candidate of the APC, even though the PDP never called any witness from the examination body to substantiate its claim that the APC candidate was not the owner of the certificate he tendered for his election.
“The tribunal did not deny that we won the election overwhelmingly. It instead hid under a feeble excuse that the names of our candidate on the two certificates he presented to the electoral body are slightly different from each other to award our mandate to the opposition. It is a sad day for democracy as the judgment is a slap on thousands of the electorates who stood in the sun to make their choice,”
“This judgment is a violent attack on the position of the Supreme Court in many established cases where an alphabet was either omitted or added to a candidate’s name. We are definitely going to appeal the judgment because it signals a danger for our democracy and amounted to stealing the mandate of the people. The judgment is a judicial subversion of the mandate of the people.” The statement said.
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