The Supreme Court Judgment which gave Kogi State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal the approval to use forensic analysis in its judgment has given the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, hope of reclaiming Kogi State again after what appears to be impossible.
The Tuesday judgment of the apex court signalled a sign of hope for PDP governorship candidate in the state, Musa Wada, who scored 189,704 to emerge the first runner up of the election.
Musa Wada in his petition marked EPT/KG/GOV/06/2019 at the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, alleged that the November 16 Kogi State governorship election was marred by over-voting, manipulation of figures, vote-buying, violence amongst other irregularities which gave Bello 216,518 margin ahead of him.
In his prayer to Tribunal, he sought the relief of the court to cancel Bello’s votes in seven local government based on the allegation of irregularities and then be declared the winner of the election having scored the highest number of valid votes
Wada’s Main Hope At Tribunal
With the approval of the use of forensic analysis by the Supreme Court, the chance of canceling Yahaya Bello’s votes in the seven local government where the PDP candidate alleged were marred by irregularities is very high due to too many irregularities that played out on the day of election.
If Wada’s prayer are granted and Triunal cancel the votes of Bello in the seven local government, Wada will automatically have the highest number of votes.
There are also submissions that the Tribunal may not declare the PDP candidate the winner of the election even if his prayers were answered by Tribunal because the number of ‘canceled votes’ will be more than the number of votes he scored.
What is, however, obtainable is that if the Tribunal canceled more than 216,518 votes Bello used to defeat Wada, the PDP candidate can still be declared the winner of the election because the ‘canceled votes’ never existed in the eyes of the law. Such votes were recorded through manipulation of figures, over-voting and several other irregularities, the argument of canceled votes being more than the votes of the ‘winner’ will not come to play in this case.
