Supreme Court Sacks APC Rep, Declares PDP Winner

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday nullified the election of a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulkadir Modibbo.

The election of Mr Modibbo, a member of the All Progressives Congress, was earlier affirmed by the Court of Appeal in Yola.

But the Supreme Court quashed it, and upheld an earlier decision of a federal high court which handed victory to the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party.

The tussle was over the Yola South, Yola North, and Girei Federal Constituency of Adamawa State.

The top court faulted the decision by the Court of Appeal which had ceded the office to another candidate of the APC, Mustapha Usman.

At the high court, the applicants had said that Mr Modibbo did not qualify to be nominated as a candidate for the APC because he was yet to complete his National Youth Service Corp and was still a serving NYSC Member.

The applicants also provided documents indicating that Mr Modibbo falsified some information submitted to INEC ahead of his election.

The high court presided by Justice Abdulaziz Anka had ruled that the applicants proved beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Modibbo should not have been fielded as a valid candidate for the party.

The court decided that the candidate with the next highest number during the main election should be made the winner.

The PDP candidate, Jafar Suleiman, had emerged second with 48, 476 votes while Mr Modibbo polled 80, 48,476 votes.

Dissatisfied with the division, Mr Usman who emerged runner-up at the APC primary appealed the High Court decision.

The appeal court ordered Mr Usman to replace Mr Modibbo.

Aggrieved by the Court of Appeal decision, Mr Modibbo took the matter to the Supreme Court.

“The person other than these two, who scored the highest votes should be declared the winner,” the Supreme Court ruled.

A five-member panel of the Court led by Justice Ejembi Eko directed INEC to issue certificate of return to the declared winner.

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