Kano State Governor Abdullah Umar Ganduje has described claims by former leader of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Buba Galadima that Supreme Court’s expected verdict on the state’s governorship election is causing tension as baseless and lacking merit.
Galadima yesterday declared that the Supreme Court verdict that removed Emeka Ihedioha as governor of Imo State should not spare Ganduje because the Kano election witnessed similar incidences as that of Imo. He told journalists in Abuja that the technicalities considered and applied by the apex court, which affirmed Hope Uzodinma as Imo State Governor on Tuesday, tied to the cancellation of votes that allegedly belonged to Abba Kabiru Yusuf of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“Exactly what happened in Kano happened in Imo and so, if an election has to be cancelled, it has to be at the polling units level according to the Supreme Court ruling. “But in Kano, votes were not cancelled at the polling units or ward level, but at the local government level. So, it goes without saying that Ganduje is gone, and anything to the contrary, Nigeria will see the fire,” he said.
But responding, Coordinator of Governor Ganduje’s legal team, Mohammad Abdullahi Lawan, argued that Galadima’s view has absolutely no correlation with the facts and circumstances of the Ihedioha case and that of Ganduje, insisting that Galadima’s point was an exhibition of crass ignorance of the law.
In a statement made available to journalists, Lawan explained, “In the former (Ihedioha case), while there was glaring evidence of cancellation of results by officials other than the presiding officers, in Governor Ganduje’s case, there was no evidence of such cancellation by officials order than the presiding officers.
“Instead, there was proven evidence in the Governor Ganduje case, that the cancellation of some of the 207 polling units were carried out by the respective presiding officers of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the polling units, as was clearly depicted in the numerous Form ECG 40s tendered and admitted in evidence without any objections by the petitioners.
“Again, in the Ganduje case, INEC failed to collate the results of 62 polling units in Gama ward comprising over 48,000 registered voters in an election with a lead margin of only 26,000 votes! “What is worse is that the disruption of the collation of the results was caused by the PDP agent, one Dr. Yakasai, who testified as PW30.”
“He admitted that while the results were being collated, a commotion arose and he took away the original results of INEC and hid in a room for over one hour! In the end, only 12 of those results were tendered in court,” he stated.
