The Adamawa State High Court has dismissed a suit seeking to nullify the governorship election in the state.
The judgment of the court came Friday morning, hours after the state supplementary gubernatorial election was concluded with Umaru Fintiri of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) declared winner, having scored the highest votes in both the March 9 main election and the Thursday return.
Giving his judgement on an originating motion filed by the candidate of the Movement for the Restoration and Defence of Democracy (MRDD), Rev Eric Theman, the trial judge, Justice Abdulaziz Waziri, said he had no option but to dismiss the motion because the plaintiff submitted documents that were uncertified, and that, more significantly, the plaintiff failed to tender evidence that the logo of his party was omitted from the ballot paper for the March 9 election, as the said ballot paper was not before the court.
The plaintiff, represented by his counsel, Barr Mustapha Ibrahim, had gone before the court to allege that he was deprived the right to be voted for in the March 9 election because the logo of his party was not on the ballot paper even after he had been duly recognised as a gubernatorial candidate.
He asked for an interim injunction stopping the rerun of that election which had been declared inconconlusive. He also asked for a nullification of the March 9 election itself, with a fresh one organised with the logo of his party duly included on the ballot paper.
The court granted his request to suspend the rerun of that election while hearing on the substantive suit continued. But there was a lifting of the injunction against the rerun last Tuesday and the judgement delivered on Friday morning.
Justice Waziri, who awarded no cost to any of the parties, advised that any party wishing to appeal the judgement had 90 days to go to the Yola Division of the Court of Appeal.
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