The court disqualified the PDP from fielding a candidate and contesting in the governorship election.
By Emma Ogbuehi
Arising from allegations of flawed primaries, a Federal High Court sitting in Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, has nullified the election of Dauda Lawan-Dare as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the state.
The court went further to disqualify the PDP from fielding a candidate. This is the second time the court is annulling the governorship primaries of the party in Zamfara in the run-up to 2023 general elections.
The Presiding Judge, Justice Aminu Bappa, while delivering the judgement on Tuesday, ruled that the PDP will not field any candidate for the 2023 governorship election in the state.
Earlier in September this year, the court had nullified the election of Lawal-Dare following a suit filed before it by Ibrahim Shehu and two other aspirants challenging the credibility of the primary.
The court ordered a re-run election where Lawal-Dare also re-emerged as the winner but his opponent, Ibrahim Shehu, went to court again to challenge the election.
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Justice Bappa, therefore, ruled that the re- election of Dare was also characterised by a series of irregularities and as such, it was nullified while the PDP was disqualified from contesting the governorship election in 2023.
If the judgement is not vacated, it would mark a repeat of the situation in 2019, when the All Progressives Congress (APC) was disqualified from contesting elections in the state on account of flawed primaries. The weight of that judgement was what the PDP benefitted from in filling the governorship position and other seats in the state House of Assembly. Governor Bello Matawalle, who later defected to the APC was one of the beneficiaries of the judgement, which had Supreme Court seal. He ran as the candidate of PDP and was declared governor following the disqualification of APC and its candidates.