The National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal, NAEPT, sitting in Minna has dismissed the petition filed by Mohammed Nazeer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), challenging the victory of Shehu Saleh of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the Magama/Rijau Federal Constituency.
The presiding chairman of the Tribunal, Justice Angela Otaluka dismissed the petition and awarded the sum of N300,000 to the petitioner.
Nazeer had approached the tribunal, urging it to declare him the rightful winner of the February 25 polls, having scored the majority votes in the election, claiming the result was manipulated in favour of the respondent, Shehu Sale.
He also claimed that the election was marred by irregularities and non-compliance with the electoral act, further arguing that the respondent did not score the lawful votes cast at the polls.
Reviewing the petition, Justice Angela Otaluka declared that all the issues raised and the pieces of evidence tendered before the Tribunal were all immaterial and inconsequential and lacked merit, and dismissed the petition for lack of merit.
In a similar development, the Tribunal dismissed a petition filed by Sa’idu Isah of the PDP for Agaie Federal Constituency, challenging the victory of Mahmud Abdullahi of the APC.
Isah had called on the Tribunal to declare him the rightful winner of the February 25 National Assembly Election to represent Agaie/Lapai Federal Constituency, alleging that he got the majority of votes cast.
The petitioner added that the election was marred by unprecedented crisis and irregularities in most polling units across the two federal constituencies.
Justice Angela Otaluka in her judgment, explained that the petitioner had failed to substantiate his claims as contained in his petition and failed to prove the allegations of noncompliance, she then dismissed the petition.
