The Court of Appeal in Abuja has announced that the judgment in the Kano state governorship election dispute will be delivered on Friday, November 17, starting at 10 am.
The appellate court had previously reserved judgment on the case on November 6.
The election tribunal had affirmed Yusuf Gawuna, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the duly elected governor of the state. Simultaneously, it nullified the victory of Abba Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).
Following the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declaring Yusuf as the winner of the election with 1,019,602 votes, defeating his closest rival, Gawuna, who scored 890,705 votes, the tribunal deducted 165,663 votes from Yusuf’s total.
This deduction was based on the grounds that the ballot papers (165,663) were not stamped, signed, and dated as required by law.
After the deduction, Yusuf was left with 853,939 votes. The court declared the 165,663 votes recorded from the affected ballot papers invalid and ordered INEC to issue a certificate of return to the APC candidate.
In response, Yusuf appealed the tribunal’s verdict, leading to the upcoming judgment by the Court of Appeal on November 17.