The Zamfara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was hit by a legal Tsunami yesterday as the Supreme Court voided the election of all the party’s candidates elected into various offices in the just concluded general elections.
Affected by the judgment are the governor-elect, Alhaji Bello Matawalle; three senators-elect, namely Tijjani Yahaya (Zamfara North) Aliyu Bilbis (Zamfara Central) and the incumbent governor, Abdulaziz Yari (Zamfara West).
Also to forfeit their mandates in the just concluded elections are seven House of Reps members-elect and 24 members-elect of the state’s House of Assembly.
A five-man panel of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment yesterday, held that the APC in Zamfara State did not conduct valid primaries from which its candidates emerged.
The panel, led by Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Ibrahim Muhammad, held that the APC had no valid candidates for the elections.
It declared that the first runners-up, who scored the second highest votes and the required spread are winners.
In the lead judgment by Justice Paul Galumje, the court upheld the earlier judgment by the Court of Appeal in Sokoto and dismiss the three appeals the affected APC candidates filed, adding that since the APC had no valid candidates, having not conducted valid primaries, the votes recorded by its candidates are wasted votes.