I will appeal tribunal judgment – Jerry Gana’s son, Joshua

Representative for Niger State’s Edati/Lavun/Mokwa Federal Constituency Joshua Audu-Gana has announced his intention to challenge the election petition tribunal’s ruling.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the three-person tribunal presided over by Sylvester Godspower found in favor of the petitioners and rendered its decision on Monday.

Following the tribunal’s invalidation of ballots cast in 26 polling units within the constituency, Gana received 46,494 votes and Gbatamagi received 39,159.

While the tribunal has called for a rerun in some voting units in my constituency, I remain a member of the House of Representatives until all court processes are exhausted, Audu-Gana told reporters.

According to NAN, the tribunal ordered a rerun in 23 of the constituency’s 482 polling units, invalidating 14, 411 provisional voting certificates.

Well, this isn’t what we planned for, but hey, that’s democracy for you, and we’re still pretty sure our run in Congress isn’t finished.

I get the media’s enthusiasm for attracting viewers/listeners/readers. However, it has been shown that the court is only the beginning of the judicial procedure.

Therefore, my attention is fully on representing the people of the Edati/Lavun/Mokwa Federal Constituency in the legislature and on defending the mandate that was freely and honorably bestowed upon me by those same people in the Court of Appeal.

This court’s ruling will not stand, I am certain of that.

In his address, he told the residents of the Edati/Lavun/Mokwa Federal Constituency, “I urge the good and hardworking people of Edati/Lavun/Mokwa Federal Constituency to keep the faith and be rest assured that their mandate will not be taken away under any guise.”

According to NAN, Audu-Gana of the PDP won with 47,942 votes versus Abdullahi Gbatamagi’s 40,003. Gbatamagi ran for the All Progressives Congress (APC).

However, the APC and Gbatamagi, represented by Johnson Usman, petitioned the tribunal to overturn Gana’s victory.

Petitioners claimed that the vote was unlawful because it was not conducted in accordance with the Electoral Act of 2022.

They also noted that the margin of victory was smaller than the number of PVCs gathered from voting places where polls were either postponed or called off. (NAN).