The All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Nasiru Gawuna, was declared the victor of the March 18 election by the Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, who also removed Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf from office.
Yusuf, who contested on the platform of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), was declared the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) after the poll in March.
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But on Wednesday, the three-man panel, after hearing the petitions, ordered the withdrawal of the certificate of return which INEC presented to Yusuf and directed a certificate of return to be issued to Gawuna.
The court deducted 165,663 votes from Yusuf’s total as invalid votes, stating that the affected ballot papers were not stamped or signed and therefore declared invalid.
The ruling was made nearly six months after the APC candidate conceded defeat to Yusuf after INEC gave the NNPP candidate the certificate of return.
On March 29, Gawuna made a two-minute audio statement in which he said that, “as a good Muslim”, he was obligated to accept the results of the election, whether they were favourable to him or not.
Despite the fact that his campaign team had asked INEC to review the election results, he continued, the commission had determined that Yusuf had won the vote.
