Zamfara governor removed from office; rerun elections ordered in three LGAs by the Appeal Court

The election of Lawal Dauda, a member of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), as governor of Zamfara State was declared void by the Court of Appeal, which met in Abuja on Thursday.

In a decision based on an appeal submitted by All Progressives Congress (APC) former governor Bello Matawalle, the court mandated that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hold new elections in three local government districts.

The Maradun, Birnin-Magaji, and Bukyun local government regions are the three.

Recall that INEC pronounced Dauda Lawal the winner of the governorship on March 18 after he received 377,726 votes.

It was reported that Bello Matawalle, the governor in office at the time and current Minister of State for Defence, received 311,976 votes.

Bello filed a petition challenging Dauda’s election with the Zamfara State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, which was seated at Sokoto.

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Akinlola Kehinde, SAN, head of Matawalle’s legal team, had claimed that election results, including those of Maradun LGA, had been improperly collated.

Additionally, he said that INEC had not provided a rationale for the non-holding of polls in a number of the state’s wards.

However, the Tribunal rejected Matawalle’s appeal as being without merit and upheld Lawal’s election.

President Bola Tinubu named Matawalle as Minister of State, Defence after he was unsuccessful in his campaign for a second term.

However, he continued to challenge the Tribunal’s decision, claiming that Dauda was not the winner of the majority of valid votes cast in the gubernatorial election and that the results were not definitive.

He argued that the Tribunal had improperly excluded certain paragraphs from his petition along with other material submitted by his witnesses.

Matawalle was challenged by the PDP, who said he had not provided enough evidence to support his petition against Dauda’s election victory.