Supreme Court Affirms Sanwo-Olu’s Election as Lagos Governor

Alex Enumah in Abuja

A five-member panel of the Supreme Court has affirmed the election of Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as Governor of Lagos State.

The panel in a unanimous judgment delivered by Justice Mohammed Lawal, affirmed the declaration of the APC’s candidate as winner of the March 18, 2023 governorship election, after dismissing two separate appeals challenging his victory.

Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party (LP), who came second and Abdulazeez Adediran popular known as Jandor of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who came third had challenged the election of Sanwo-Olu on grounds of alleged irregularities, malpractices non-compliance as well as non-qualification.

They had specifically argued that the Deputy Governor, haven acquired citizenship of the United States of America is not qualified to contest elective position and as such his nomination as deputy governor was unlawful null and void.

They therefore argued that his alleged unlawful nomination affects the qualification of Sanwo-Olu, hence the court should nullify their participation in the governorship election.

However, both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal in their respective decisions dismissed the two appeals for failure to prove allegations made in their petitions.

The apex court in its judgment delivered on Friday, held that it has found no cogent reason to deviate from the concurrent judgments of the tribunal and Court of Appeal which held that Sanwo-Olu was lawfully elected as Governor of Lagos State.

The appellate court in a unanimous judgment held that acquisition of a foreign national does not bar any citizen by birth from contesting election.

Lawal stated that the only condition a citizen with dual citizen can lose his right to be elected as governor is when he denounced his Nigerian citizenship by birth.

The apex court subsequently dismissed the two appeals for lacking in merit.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the APC had polled 762,134 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Rhodes-Vivour, who scored 312,329 votes, with Jandor coming a distant third with 62,449 votes.

Details later.