JUST IN: Supreme Court confirms Lawan as candidate of Yobe North, Machina loses

 

The Senate president, Ahmed Lawan has won the final battle of who will represent Yobe north as senatorial candidate.

The apex court on Monday declared Lawan as the authentic candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to represent the senatorial district at the 2023 general elections, putting to rest the ambition of Bashir Sheriff Machina.

In its lead ruling on Monday, Justice Centus Nweze criticized Machina’s strategy of starting the lawsuit at the Federal High Court Damaturu division by way of an originating summons and without using oral evidence to support fraud charges.

With a split decision of three to two, the Supreme Court reinstated Lawan as the APC senatorial candidate for the Yobe North Senatorial District.

According to Justice Nweze, given the serious charges in Machina’s lawsuit against the defendants, he should issue a Writ of Summons and begin his case at the Federal High Court.

Justice Nweze added that there were antagonistic difficulties in Machina’s case that couldn’t be settled by sending out a summons.

The Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal both reached the right conclusions, according to Justices Adamu Jauro and Emmanuel Akomaye Agim, who dissented from the majority ruling and named Machina as the APC’s senatorial candidate for the Yobe North Senatorial District.

The primary election that resulted in Machina’s nomination on May 28, 2022, according to the two Justices, was done legally and in accordance with the law.

Justices Jauro and Agim argued that the May 28 primary election was illegal because it was not called off before the June 9 primary election, which purportedly produced Lawan. They described this as illegal, unlawful, and a violation of section 285 of the 1999 Constitution.

In addition, they maintained that Lawan voluntarily withdrew from the presidential primary race in an uncontested letter to the APC.

They said that while INEC was clear that it observed the May 28 primary election that gave rise to Machina, it did not observe the June 9, 2022 election since APC had not given any notice to that consequence.

As a result, they rejected the appeal as meritless and inept.