The recent judgments of the Supreme Court on governorship elections in the past few weeks appear to have concluded the disputations that arose from the 2023 general elections with respect to the Presidential and governorship elections. On Wednesday, January 31, the Supreme Court affirmed the election of Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State and dismissed the appeal of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate in the 2023 general elections, Aisha Dahiru Ahmed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a round\nof decisions on appeals arising from governorship election petitions delivered\non Thursday, January 25, the Supreme Court affirmed the election of the\nGovernors of Rivers, Taraba and Sokoto States. On January 19, the Supreme Court\naffirmed the elections of the Governors of Delta, Gombe, Kaduna, Kebbi, Nasarawa\nand Ogun States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On January\n12, the Supreme Court had delivered judgments on appeals of governorship\nelection petitions for ten States – \nAbia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Lagos, Kano,\nPlateau and Zamfara. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nelection of the Kano State Governor, Abba Yusuf had been nullified by the Kano\nState Governorship Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. Similarly,\nthe Court of Appeal had nullified the election of the Plateau State Governor,\nCaleb Mutfwang and ordered a re-run in three Local Governments for the\ngovernorship election in Zamfara State. All three decisions were overturned by\nthe Supreme Court. The election of Nasarawa State Governor, Abdullahi Sule had\nbeen nullified by the Nasarawa State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.\nHowever, this decision was overturned by the judgment of the Court of Appeal,\nwhich was upheld by the Supreme Court. Similarly, the Kaduna State Governorship\nElection Tribunal had voided the election of Governor Uba Sani and ordered a\nre-run in four Local Government Areas in the State, a decision that was\noverturned by the Court of Appeal and upheld by the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nIndependent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conducted re-run and bye\nelections into Federal and State legislative seats February 3, 2024. Out of a\ntotal of 44 positions to fill, 35 were created by re-run elections ordered by\nthe courts in petitions that followed the 2023 general elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2023\ngeneral elections were adjudged to have lacked credibility by several domestic\nand international election observers, as well as by the generality of Nigerians.\nThe disappointment that met the conduct and outcome of the elections stirred a\nhigh level of public interest in election petitions, thereby bringing the\njudiciary into scrutiny. The pronouncements of some of the election petitions\ntribunals, the Court of Appeal and even the Supreme Court have raised questions\nranging from bias of judicial officers, deviation from judicial precedents, and\non to discrepancies between judgments read in open courts and those in the case\nfiles. The certified true copy of the full judgment of the Supreme Court on the\nhighly anticipated appeal of the Presidential election petition, which was met\nwith mixed reactions from Nigerians, was not made available for some time after\nthe Court delivered the judgment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last\ngeneral elections point to the critical need for deep-seated reforms that will\npromote transparency in election administration and adjudication. This is to\nensure that elections reflect the will of the people and that election disputes\nare seen to be decided on the basis of merit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recent judgments of the Supreme Court on governorship elections in the past few weeks appear to have concluded the disputations that arose from the 2023 general elections with respect to the Presidential and governorship elections. On Wednesday, January 31, the Supreme Court affirmed the election of Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State and dismissed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3501,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500\/revisions\/3501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}