The Sadik Wali faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kano State has challenged the judgement declaring the governorship primary that produced Wali as the party’s candidate invalid.
Justice A.M. Liman of the Federal High Court in Kano on Thursday declared Mohammed Abacha as the authentic governorship candidate of the PDP in the state, ordering that Abacha’s name be cleared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Reacting to the judgement on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday, running mate to Wali, Dr Yusuf Danbatta, disagreed with the judgement and confirmed that the Wali camp of the party has appealed the judgement.
“We have already approached the Court of Appeal. We have already filed. You know he (the Judge) delivered judgement via Zoom. So we listened to all the grounds, he said the only ground he is relying on was that PDP failed to give notice of 21 days.
“So if that is the case, which party is Mohammed Abacha contesting under? Is he contesting under APGA or what? Be that as it may, what we did this morning, we already filed our appeal where we have over 20 grounds while that judgement should be turned around By God’s grace,” Danbatta said.
However, a representative of the Mohammed Abacha camp, Mohammed Jamo, who was also a guest on Politics Today, disagreed with Danbatta, insisting that the judgement that declared Abacha as the lawful PDP candidate is in order. He also blamed the PDP national leadership over the crisis rocking the Kano chapter of the party.
Jamo said, “Yesterday was one of those days where you will feel proud that you are a democrat and you are under a democratic government where the rule of law governs the activities of political parties.
“All these things started with the impunity that was put in place by the leadership of the PDP whereby a duly constituted committee of the party in Kano by the state to the local government and ward level are fully in place and then you want to run a primary election, what you are supposed to do is to work together with that existing party committee but unfortunately some people from Abuja decided to go through the back channel.”
Abacha had asked the court to declare him the winner of the primary lawfully conducted by the PDP and certified by INEC in Kano, a prayer which the court granted.
He argued that based on the Electoral Act 2022, he had scored the highest number of total votes in the election held on May 25.
