Tribunal sacks Jerry Gana’s son, orders supplementary election

The National and State Houses of Assembly Election Tribunal sitting in Minna has withdrawn the certificate of return of Joshua Gana, as the representative of Edati/Lavun/Mokwa Federal Constituency in Niger State.

Mr Gana is the son of a former minister and director of the defunct Directorate for Food, Roads and Infrastructure (DFFRI), Jere Gana.

The tribunal, in its judgement, ordered that a supplementary election be held in 26 polling units of the constituency.

The sacking of Mr Gana was a sequel to a petition filed by the Candidate of All Progressive Congress (APC), Abdullahi Usman-Gbatamagi, through his Counsel, Johnson Usman (SAN), before the tribunal.

Mr Gana, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) scored 47,942 votes while Mr Usman-Gbatamagi scored votes.

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Mr Usman-Gbatamagi argued that Mr Gana shouldn’t have been declared the winner of the election because he did not meet the required margin of victory as stipulated in the Electoral Act, 2022.

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He argued that his margin of victory was less than the amount of registered voters ( 14,411) in the polling units where elections were not held or were cancelled.

The tribunal agreed with him. The tribunal also invalidated the votes in 26 polling units thereby reducing the votes of Gana to 46,494 while that of Gbatamagi is now 39,159 votes.

Mr Gana can still appeal the judgement of the tribunal.