The National Secretary of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Oladipupo Olayokun, has narrated how the action of the Supreme Court prevented some people from snatching the Kano State governorship seat through the backdoor.
He submitted that the Supreme Court judgement, which reinstated Abba Yusuf as the duly elected governor of Kano State, was a victory for Nigeria’s democracy and the country’s judiciary.
Speaking during an interview with Punch which was published on Sunday, 28th January, the NNPP chieftain said the ruling of the Kano tribunal and the Appeal Court on the Kano governorship election were traumatizing.
Olayokun said the NNPP felt threatened after the tribunal and Appeal Courts ruled in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its governorship candidate, Nasiru Gawuna, but it was the Supreme Court that eventually saved the day. 
He added that what happened indicated that the APC wanted to snatch Kano State by all means despite the overwhelming vote given to the NNPP by the electorates in Kano State.
The NNPP scribe also questioned the decision of the Kano tribunal judges to deliver their ruling by Zoom.
He said: “Yes, as regards the issue of Kano State, we thank the judiciary; we thank God, and we thank Nigerians. We thank the people from the international community for what eventually played out at the Supreme Court.
“The trauma was uncalled for, and it was unnecessary; the trauma in the sense that you went out into the field, selling your party and your candidates to the electorate. The electorate, in their wisdom, accepted your party. The results were announced, and the loser of the election accepted the result and congratulated the winner. Only for people surrounding the loser to go to court, and then given all the evidence provided, you see the court derailing, so to speak. And as if it was a mistake at the first layer, the second layer of the court also derailed.
“We felt threatened that what God gave to us, some people somewhere wanted to snatch it through the back door. But thank God, the Supreme Court rose to the occasion and came to the rescue of the Nigerian judiciary and the Nigerian democracy.
“Without mincing words, it was very glaring that some people wanted to snatch Kano by all means.
“In the 2023 general elections, there were five polls in all the states, including Abuja, except eight states where we had what they call off-season elections. The five polls are the presidential election, the senatorial election, and the House of Representatives, making three on the same day, February 25th. Then you have the governorship election, and the House of Assembly election on the 18th of March.
“Now, let us take Kano State for example. In all the elections, the NNPP roundly defeated the APC. The presidential candidate of the NNPP, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso defeated the current President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by a wide margin. I am talking of Kano’s State. On the same day, in the senatorial election, there were three senatorial seats. The NNPP took two; the APC took one in very shady circumstances. Everybody knows it in Kano. For the House of Representatives election, out of 24, the NNPP got 18, the APC had six. Then you fast-forward to March 18th when we had the governorship election and the House of Assembly election. In the governorship election, the NNPP defeated the APC candidate.
“Immediately after the election, the governorship candidate of the APC, Dr. Nasiru Gawuna, congratulated the candidate of the NNPP, Abba Yusuf, for a well-deserved victory, only for the APC, about one month later, to go to court, and in the matter before the tribunal, the candidate of the APC was not joined. Then all the matters went normal. However, on the day when the tribunal would give their ruling, they said they would not go to Kano State. They gave the judgment through what they call Zoom.”
Olayokun added that the Supreme Court verdict on the Kano governorship election showed that something was wrong at the Tribunal and Appeal Court levels, and the lower courts bungled the integrity of the judiciary.
“The judgment of the Supreme Court was very clear. It vindicated the stand of those people who believed that something went wrong at the two layers of the judiciary, either at the tribunal or at the Court of Appeal, because the person who read the lead judgment at the Court of Appeal, Justice Enyang Okoro, JSC, made it very clear that the lower court bungled the integrity of the judiciary. It shows the incompetence or let me use the finesse of those two people, either the chairman of the panel at the Court of Appeal or the registrar for them to have released a CTC which ran contrary to what they read to the court and the world,” the NNPP scribe noted.
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