Breaking: Court Of Appeal Defers Judgment In Nasarawa Governorship Case

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has deferred ruling in an appeal filed by All Progressives Congress (APC) governor of Nasarawa State Abdullahi Sule against the majority ruling of a tribunal that declared his election invalid in favor of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate David Ombugadu.

The parties concerned were informed by a three-judge panel led by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam that the date of the verdict will be announced.

During the day’s events, Governor Sule’s attorney, Wole Olanipekun, asked the court to reject the tribunal’s decision and grant his client’s appeal. Wole filed five processes to contest the appeal.

Reports stated that Olanipekun argued that the tribunal refused to take the submissions of their witnesses during the tribunal hearing and that data from the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) tendered to the tribunal, were merely dumped without being considered as evidence.

“After adopting his processes, counsel to Ombugadu and the PDP, Kanu Agabi, urged the court to dismiss the appeal against the tribunal judgment stating that their evidence was 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 judgment of the tribunal argued that in delivering judgment, the lower court painstakingly gave a breakdown of how it arrived at its decision.