By Our Reporter
The election petition tribunal sitting in Kaduna state has dismissed the petition filed by the All Progressive Congress (APC) and its candidate, Bello Dankande challenging the victory of the PDP in the December 5th and 9th House of Assembly by-election for Bakura Constituency in Zamfara State.
The three-man panel of the tribunal, led by Justice Raliat Adebiyi gave the unanimous judgement in Kaduna on Friday.
Recall, the APC and its candidate Bello Dankande had filed a joint petition on December 20th, 2020, specifically to disqualify Ibrahim Tukur of PDP, winner of the December 5th and 9th House of Assembly by-election on the grounds that it was marred by massive irregularities.
Dankande alleged arbitrary allocation of figures, result sheets not showing results of all political parties that participated in the election, intimidation of voters among others.
Furthermore the APC and its candidate claimed that they only participated in the first election held on December 5th, which was declared inconclusive by INEC, but lamented that the electoral umpire, still went ahead to conduct a rerun election four days after despite the Security lapses that made the opposition party not to participate in the rerun election held on December 9th, 2020.
Delivering the lead judgement that lasted over five hours, the tribunal dismissed all the grounds of the petition in its entirety.
The tribunal added that the petitioners failed to prove substantial non-compliance of the electoral act in most of the polling units including allegations of thuggery and harassment of voters during the election.
