Supreme Court Affirms Fintiri’s Election

•Says Binani’s appeal grossly lacks merit

Chuks Okocha and Alex Enumah in Abuja

A five-member panel of the apex court, yesterday, dismissed the appeal by Senator Aisha Dahiru Binani of the All Progressives Congress (APC) seeking to upturn the declaration of Ahmadu Fintiri as Governor of Adamawa.

The five-member panel in a unanimous judgment delivered by Justice John Okoro, dismissed the appeal for being incompetent and lacking in merit, and upheld Fintiri’s election.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared PDP’s Fintiri as governor, having won majority of votes cast at the March 18 and April 16 rerun governorship election in Adamawa.

Not satisfied, APC and Binani approached the governorship tribunal to challenge the declaration on grounds that they won the majority votes as declared by the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Adamawa State.

But in their separate judgments, both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal dismissed the case of the petitioners for lacking in merit.

Not satisfied Binani and APC approached the apex court and sought to set aside the concurrent judgments of the two lower courts.

At the hearing, the appellants’ lawyers led by Chief Akin Olujinmi SAN, urged the apex court to invoke Section 152 of the Electoral Act, 2022 to declare Binani as the lawfully elected governor of Adamawa State.

Olujimi submitted that the REC, who pronounced Binani as winner of the March 18, 2023, governorship election had powers under the Electoral Act to do so.

It was his submission that as a Staff of the INEC, the REC could not be faulted for making declaration in the election he superintendent over. But the respondents all disagreed with him and urged the court to dismiss the appeal for lacking in merit.

In their judgment yesterday, the apex court agreed with the respondents that the appeal was unmeritorious and having dismissed it, the panel affirmed the concurrent judgments of the Court of Appeal and the tribunal, which affirmed the declaration of Fintiri as the winner of the March 18 governorship election and April 16 rerun election.

The apex court pointed out that the appeal was grossly incompetent because the appellants/petitioners did not prove that Fintiri and his party, the PDP did not win the governorship election.

Meanwhile, the former Vice-President, Atiku Abubukar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have congratulated Fintiri on the confirmation of his victory as governor by the Supreme Court.

Atiku’s message read: “Congratulations to Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, whose victory in the March 2023 gubernatorial election, has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Nigeria. This, again, is a victory for the PDP family and for democracy in our country.”

The PDP in its message to Fintiri, said the judgement of the Supreme Court was a further affirmation of his victory at the March 18, 2023 governorship election in the State.

In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, the party said, “The judgement of the Supreme Court, the highest and final Court in the Country serves as an iron-cast stamp in validating the triumph of the expressed will of the people in resisting various attempts by undemocratic and anti-people forces to subvert the electoral process and illegally take over control of the State.

“The spur-of-the-moment celebration across Adamawa State and other states of the federation at the news of the Supreme Court Judgment clearly shows that the verdict is in line with the expectation of Nigerians and particularly the people of Adamawa State in their quest to sustain transparent, development-driven and people-oriented leadership as epitomised in Governor Fintiri and the PDP.”