Adamawa State Supplementary Governorship Election Will Not Hold This Saturday

The Adamawa State supplementary governorship election slated for Saturday has been put on hold as Justice Abdulaziz Waziri of the Adamawa State High Court on Thursday in Yola, adjourned ruling on a counter motion filed by INEC, seeking to vacate a motion ex parte restraining INEC from conducting the supplementary governorship election.  

The Judge cited personal health condition as the reason ruling on the matter could not be done on Thursday. He therefore adjourned till Tuesday next week for ruling.

Speaking on the court’s decision, Tanimu Inuwa, counsel to INEC, said: “As far as I’m concerned, it is a normal day; we canvassed our position, because the plaintiff wanted to stop us from conducting the supplementary election on the ground that they claimed exclusion.

Our position is that the court does not have jurisdiction, because by the provisions of both the Electoral Act and the Constitution, it’s only a relevant tribunal that has jurisdiction to entertain this matter.

More so that the commission had published the list of candidates for the governorship election in Adamawa 30 days to election without their candidate, where were they? Assuming that in this election, a winner had been declared what would they have done?  

Fundamentally though, our argument is that the court does not have jurisdiction. There’s no material placed before this court to warrant the court to entertain this matter.”  

With the adjournment, it is now clear that the supplementary governorship election would not hold on Saturday March 23, 2019, as scheduled, more so that Kassim Gaidam, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in charge of Adamawa had stressed that the commission has “a very good tradition of compliance with court orders”.

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