From Mustapha Adamu, Kano
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano state has rejected the announcement of Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) as the winner of the March 18 governorship election.
The Returning Officer of the election, Professor Ahmad Dokko Ibrahim, on Monday declared Yusuf as a winner with 1,019,602 votes, while the APC candidate, Dr Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna polled 890,705 votes.
However, the party, at a press conference in Kano yesterday, disputed the election outcome and gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) seven days to review the result and declare the election in conclusive.
Speaking on behalf of the APC Chairman in the state, legal adviser of the party, Abdul Adamu Fagge, said the election should have been declared inconclusive because the cancelled votes, which are more than 270,000 is higher than the 128,897 margin between the winner and runner up.
The party then hinged its argument to the cancellation of sixteen House of Assembly elections in the state due to violence and over-voting as the reason, adding that “while the same votes were considered in collating the governorship election ‘, as the two elections took place same day, same time, same places and under the same circumstances.”
Fagge Esq said, “based on section 65 of the Electoral Laws 2022, we have written to INEC to revisit and cancel the hasty, wrong and selfish declaration of the NNPP as winner of the elections, and declared the conduct inconclusive”.
In his remarks, Gawuna, who is the Deputy Governor of the state, admitted that power comes from God, but that would not stop the party from following legal process to challenge the outcome of the hard-fought election.
According to him, even though he had said severally during his campaign that he would accept whatever God has destined to him in the election, but it is expedient for him to follow the any legal means to challenge attempt to subvert the people’s mandate.
