Appeal Court Sacks APC’s Elisha Abbo, returns Yohanna Amos (PDP)

The Appeal Court returned the appellant I.e. Candidate of the PDP, Rev Amos Kumai Yohanna as duly elected, and further ordered INEC to retrieve the Certificate of Return awarded to the 2nd Respondent (Abbo) and hand over same to the 1st Petitioner as winner.

On February 27, INEC declared the APC Candidate and incumbent Senator, Abbo as winner with 71,927 votes defeating PDP’s Yohanna who scored 61,895 votes.

Dissatisfied with the outcome, the PDP & Yohanna approached the tribunal.

Rev. Yohanna, who contested election under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), dragged the incumbent Sen Abbo of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before tribunal challenging the election which brought him to back to the Senate.

In his petition marked, EPT/AD/SEN/02/2023, Rev Yohanna, alleged that the election of Sen. Abbo was invalid by reasons of corrupt practices or non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022.

He averred that Sen. Abbo was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast during the election, alleging over voting at various polling units, false entries, alteration and cancellation of votes at several polling units.

According to him, some of the alteration and cancellation were not signed by the presiding officers of the polling units, and prayed the tribunal to set aside the election of Senator Abbo.

He also sought for an order of the tribunal to return him (Rev. Amos Yohanna) as the duly elected candidate for the Northern Senatorial seat having polled the highest number of lawful votes cast during the exercise.

However in a delivered ruling, the tribunal dismissed the petition and awarded damages, asking the petitioner to pay N600,000 to Abbo.

Dissatisfied again, Rev Yohanna headed to the final Court for National Assembly Petitions where he has now got reprieve.

Governor Ahmadu Fintiri, is believed to have fielded the candidate of his party, and backed him tremendously to defeat Senator Abbo, who left the PDP for the APC following a rift in their relationship, which many analyst believed had been fueled by intra-party power tussle following the electoral victory of duo in 2019.