The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja minutes ago over-ruled the Nasarawa State Election Petition Tribunal, which declared David Ombugadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as winner of the state’s 2023 election. The appellate court returned incumbent governor, Abdullahi Sule winner of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner of the March election ballot.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Governor Sule winner of the March election but Ombugadu headed for the tribunal.

According to INEC, Sule polled a total of 347,209 votes to defeat his closest opponent, who secured 283,016 votes.

However, in a split decision on October 2, the tribunal nullified Sule’s election and upheld Ombugadu as the winner.

But Sule, through his counsel, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), asked the appellate court to upturn the judgment of the tribunal and allow his own appeal.

Olanipekun argued that the tribunal refused to take the submissions of their witnesses during the tribunal hearing, adding that the BVAS data were merely dumped before the tribunal without being considered as evidence.

In his response, after adopting his processes, Kanu Agabi, counsel to Ombugadu and the PDP, urged the court to dismiss the appeal against the tribunal judgment, stating that their evidence are merely documentary.

On the issue of BVAS, Agabi argued that it was sufficiently demonstrated in the tribunal as demanded by law, with the print out from the machine shown, against the argument that they were merely dumped without being analysed.

Agabi who referred the court to the judgment of the tribunal argued that in delivering judgment, the lower court painstakingly gave a breakdown of how it arrived at its decision.

The appeal court had reserved judgement.