National and state Houses of Assembly election petition tribunal sitting in Gombe State yesterday threw aside petition filed by Usman Bello Kumo, challenging the election of Senator Mohammed Danjuma Goje of the All Progressives Congress (APC), for lack of strong evidence to back up his allegation.
The chairman of the tribunal, Justice Roseline Audu, who ruled on the matter, said the petition filed by Usman Bello Kumo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could not provide strong evidence to support his allegation.
Justice Audu said after due consideration of witnesses and evidence presented by the petitioner, it was not only incompetent and lacking in weight, the allegations remained vague and totally nothing on the scale of justice, adding that the petition was filed out of the stipulated time of 21 days thus, lacking the legal competence.
The petitioner, Kumo, the immediate past House of Representatives member representing Akko Federal Constituency had sought the nullification of Senator Goje’s election citing violence, irregularities and electoral malpractices as reasons for calling for the cancellation of the results.
As stated by the tribunal, Usman Bello Kumo filed the petition on April 20, 2015, 22 days after Senator Goje was declared winner on March 30, 2015. With this, it said the petition failed out of time, as such making the petition incompetent.
The petitioner had also in his prayers asked the tribunal to cancel the election and conduct a fresh election, because the election was marred by violence, irregularities, intimidation of voters, over voting, doctoring of results as well as large scale electoral malpractices.
The tribunal said the petitioner had earlier said it would present 16 witnesses but only presented four, including the petitioner, Kumo. The tribunal also added that the petitioner failed to present concrete evidence of witnesses who saw firsthand the atrocities committed by the APC members.