Tribunal affirms Yahaya Bello’s election as Kogi state governor

The Kogi state governorship election petition tribunal sitting in Abuja on Saturday 23rd, 2020 affirmed election of Yahaya Bello as governor of Kogi State.

The major challenger, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its candidate, Musa Waha were fined the sum of N500,000, Channels TV reports.

In its ruling, the three-man Justices led by Justice Kashim G Kaigama, in a unanimous judgement, dismissed the petition of PDP governorship candidate in the election, Engr Musa Wada, for lack of merit and asked that he pay a fine of N500,000 to APC and INEC.

Musa Waha, who scored 189,704 votes to emerge the first runner-up of the election, had challenged the victory of Yahaya Bello in the November 16 governorship election in a petition marked EPT/KG/GOV/06/2019, and prayed to be declared the winner of the election having scored the highest number of valid votes.

Bello won the governorship election with 406,222 votes, defeating the PDP candidate with 216,518 which has remained the highest ever in the history of the state.

The Tribunal had earlier dismissed the petition of SDP candidate, Natasha Akpoti, against Yahaya Bello, on Monday, for lack of merit and ordered her to pay a fine of N100,000 each to APC and INEC.

Meanwhile, the PDP candidate has vowed to challenge the judgment at the Court of Appeal to seek justice and reclaim what he termed as “stolen mandate.”