Kano: Parties Asked To Return Judgement Copies

Following the controversies of the Appeal Court judgement on Kano State governorship elections, the court has asked concerned lawyers to return copies of its judgement for corrections. 

Kano State attorney-general and commissioner for Justice, Haruna Isa-Dederi, at a press conference said the certified copy of Appeal Court judgement on the state governorship election affirmed the victory of Abba Kabir Yusuf as duly elected Governor of Kano state. 

He also described the judgement as “a huge scandal” for the court. 

Last week, the court sacked the Kano governor, Abba Yusuf, on the ground that he was not qualified to contest. 

It stated that Yusuf, who contested under the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), was not a member of the party during the election.

The court declared Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC), winner of the March 18 polls.

However, the Certified True Copies of the judgement triggered confusion as it indicated that the court upheld Yusuf’s victory. 

Reacting to the development, Bashir Ahmad, former aide to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari, said  in a post on his official X handle that the Appeal Court had commenced moves to correct errors in the CTC.

The post reads, “The Court of Appeal has asked lawyers to return the copies of the Kano governorship election ruling for correction.

“The court will correct the obvious errors in the released judgment and stand by its Friday pronouncement that Nasir Gawuna is the legitimate winner of the election.”

Meanwhile, former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Mr Chidi Odinkalu, has described the judgement as “crooked.”

Odinkalu, who appeared as a guest on Politics Today, a political show on Channels Television said, “This is Nigerian judiciary, everything is possible, I’m not one of those that will come to your studio and say everything is fine. 

“There is ample material to suspect that something was wrong or something did happen with that judgement. 

“The judgement couldn’t have been a clerical error.  There is a doctrine in law that applies to clerical error: It’s called the slip rule.  For instance, if you want to write ‘wifi’ and you wrote ‘wife’, that could be a clerical error and with the consent of the parties revert wife to wifi but you cannot with the consent of the parties, having awarded cost to me will cancel the cost and award it to the other party.

“Having set aside the judgement of the lower court, you can not come back and say it was an error. Once you do that, that’s final. The only way you can re-open that matter is to go to a higher court. The order made by the court is not a clerical error. I am not from Kano, and I am not interested in the politics of Kano, but I am interested in the credibility of the judicial system in Nigeria.”