Supreme court fixes August 31 for judgment on Kogi guber poll

The supreme court has fixed August 31 to deliver judgment on the governorship election of Kogi state.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the governorship election held in November.

However, Musa Wada, candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) challenged Bello’s victory in court.

In a split judgment of two-to-one to delivered on May 23, 2020, the tribunal affirmed Bello’s election.

But on July 4, the court of appeal dismissed Wada’s appeal and affirmed Bello as governor of the state.

The appellate court also dismissed the appeals filed by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Actions Peoples Party (APP) and the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP).

Dissatisfied, the parties had approached the apex court seeking to upturn the judgment of the two lower courts.

Meanwhile, Usman Mohammed, counsel representing DPP, applied to withdraw his appeal after the seven-man panel of the apex court drew his attention to the fact that he had no case because the governorship candidate of the party did not meet the constitutionally required age of 35 as at the time of the election.

The panel led by Ibrahim Muhammad, the chief justice of Nigeria (CJN) consequently struck out DPP’s appeal.

Bello polled 406,222 votes to defeat Musa Wada of the PDP who polled 189,704, and Natasha Akpoti of the SDP, who got 9,482.

The governor won in 12 out of the 21 local government areas of the state, according to results announced by INEC.