The Court of Appeal sitting in Sokoto has nullified the primary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the governorship election in Zamfara State.
In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Tom Yakubu on Monday, the court set aside the decision of the Zamfara State High Court which allowed the APC to field a candidate for the governorship election in the state.
According to the appellate court, the trial court failed to carry out a proper evaluation of the evidence before it before arriving at a decision.
Justice Yakubu held that the decision of the State High Court was fraught with error.
He added that the appeal court has power in law to assess pieces of evidence on appeal, which the court had done in this case.
The appeal was filed by the lawmaker representing Zamfara Central district and Senate Committee Chairman on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Kabiru Marafa, and 129 others.
The court gave the ruling two weeks after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conducted the governorship election in Zamfara and 28 other states.
The Returning Officer in the state, Professor Kabiru Bala, declared Mr Mukhtar Shehu of the APC as the winner on March 11 at the end of the collation of result at the INEC Headquarters in Gusau, the state capital.
Professor Bala, a lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said Shehu scored 534,541 votes to defeat his rival from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr Bello Muhammad, polled 189,452 votes.
