The Kaduna State governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 general election, Isah Ashiru, filed an application before the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal on Tuesday, seeking the recount of the votes cast during the March 9 poll. Incumbent Governor Nasir El-Rufai of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), with 1,045,427 to Ashiru’s 814,168 votes. Ashiru is challenging El-Rufai’s victory at the tribunal on the grounds that the election was characterized by irregularities, fraud and over voting.
The lead counsel for Ashiru, Elisha Kurah (SAN), filed the application at the commencement of a pre-trail at the tribunal headed by Justice IM Bako. The tribunal chairman however adjourned the matter to May 25, 2019, to allow INEC and two other respondents in the petition time to respond to the application.
Kurah told journalists shortly after the adjournment that it was imperative for the tribunal to order a recount of the votes because they have evidence that most of the results declared were phantom votes.
”They were not backed up by votes in the ballot boxes. So we want a complete recount of the votes cast in the governorship election. We are expecting that the results would show that the PDP actually won the election, but votes were just inflated randomly just to make the APC have the semblance of winning,” Kurah said.
However, in his reaction Abdulhakeem Mustapha, counsel to El-Rufai, said he will opposed the application. He said the PDP and its candidate have four highly contentious applications and “we intend to oppose the applications on their merit and the tribunal has given us a new date for us to come and argue the applications.”
He added: “We have a preliminary objection that the petition is not competent. They (PDP and Ashiru) have an application that they want the tribunal to direct that the ballots be re-counted one after the other in open court, and we intend to oppose those applications,” he said, adding: ”We are here to defend the mandate the people have given to the governor. We intend to convince the tribunal that the petition lack merit and it should be dismissed
