Zamfara guber: Tribunal dismisses petition seeking to unseat Gov Matawalle

The Zamfara State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, on Monday dismissed a petition seeking to unseat Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle.

The petition marked EPT/ZM/GOV/2019, was filed by Muhammed Sani Takori of the Advanced People’s Democratic Alliance (APDA) against Governor Mattawalle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Delivering judgement on the petition, the Tribunal, chaired by Justice Binta Fatima Zubair relied on the Supreme Court pronouncement of May 24, 2019, that votes cast for candidates who ought not to have participated in an election are wasted votes and cannot be used in determining the outcome of an election.

Justice Zubairu held that by implication, the votes cast for Governor Matawalle and his party, the PDP, are the lawful votes as far as the March 9, governorship election in Zamfara state is concerned.

The Tribunal disagreed with the petitioner that Governor Matawalle did not win votes in two-thirds of the local government areas of Zamfara State.

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Earlier, the tribunal had dismissed Takori’s preliminary objection that the PDP did not conduct any primaries and that Matawalle was not duly sponsored by his party, and therefore was not qualified to contest for the governorship election in the first place.

In dismissing the petitioner’s objection, Justice Zubairu noted that the issue of nomination and sponsorship of a candidate is the sole responsibility of the party and also a pre-election matter of which the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to entertain.

It would be recalled that the INEC had declared Muktar Idris of All Progressives Congress as the winner of Zamfara governorship election held on March 9, 2019.

Announcing the result, the Returning Officer, Prof. Kabir Bala, said, Muktar secured 534,541 votes out of the 810,782 votes cast across the 14 local government areas of the state.

INEC said that Bello Matawalle of the PDP scored 189,452 to emerge second; while Senator Saidu Dansadau of National Rescue Movement scored 15,177 votes; and Sani Abdullahi of All Progressives Grand Alliance polled 3,865 votes.

INEC said a total of 1,717,128 voters were registered in Zamfara, of which 823,294 were accredited during the election.

However, Takori and his party, APDA went to the tribunal on the basis that the votes scored by Matawalle was insignificant to declare him the winner of the poll.