Election petitions: Farouk, Bulkachuwa, to Know fate soon

Months after the conduct of the 2019 general elections, candidates of various political parties who felt dissatisfied with the outcome of the results shifted their contest to election petition tribunal as enshrined in the electoral laws of Nigeria. 

In Bauchi State, the trio of governorship, state and national assembly election petition tribunals were inundated with series of petitions following completion of the conduct of the 2019 general elections.

At inception, the tribunal in Bauchi State received 27 election petitions bordering on allegations of different forms of electoral fraud.

 Seven of the petitions were for Senate, eight for the House of Representatives and 12 were in relation to election into the Bauchi State House of Assembly.

However, while some of the petitions could not survive pre-trial stage others were struck out at the hearing stage for lack of diligent prosecution by the petitioners; or what some of the petitioners referred to as “witness betrayal” or on some occasion because of an “arrangee” voluntary withdrawal.

For one reason or another, eight of the 27 petitions filed before the Tribunal were dismissed leaving the Court with 19 petitions to hear and determine.

Among the cases drawing the attention of the public is the case between Adamu Bulkachuwa, husband to the President of the Court of Appeal, Zainab Bulkachuwa and Farouk Mustapha of the New Nigeria People’s Party, NNPP.

The reasons for the noticeable public interest in the petition are obviously not farfetched. The first petitioner, Honourable Farouk Mustapha has apparently won public sympathy because of the widespread public belief that he was the candidate who actually won the said election, but was forcefully downsized because of the might of the APC being the ruling party during the election.

Senator Adamu Muhammad Bulkachuwa of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is considered by many political pundits as influential within the judicial circle being the husband to Justice Zainab.

 It is believed that the first respondent, Senator Bulkachuwa who is in his eighties, a former ambassador of Nigeria to Canada in the early eighties was allegedly anointed and imposed on the people of the Bauchi-North Senatorial District by the Bauchi State APC  determiners of who gets what, when and how particularly the immediate past former Bauchi State Governor, Mohammed Abubakar.

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The Governor had also filed a petition before a governorship election petition tribunal for Bauchi State challenging victory of the incumbent governor Bala Mohammed.

Another point of attention is the believe that Justice Zainab Muhammad Bulkachuwa may influence the outcome of the petition to favour her husband particularly that the matter may be brought before her court after the verdict of the trial court.

Some believed that the effort of the first petitioner to get back what he alleged as “stolen mandate” from the first respondent would be an exercise in futility considering the perceived connection of the first respondent to the President of the Court of Appeal.

Nevertheless, the first petitioner, Honourable Farouk Mustapha had on several occasions while interacting with journalists reiterated his firm confidence in the Nigerian Judiciary and by extension the election petition tribunal particularly on the day the first respondent abruptly closed his defence, because the first witness he called refused to testify in his favour.

“As a believer in God, I am never discouraged, intimidated or hypnotised by the connection of the first respondent. “Instead, I always remained convinced that I will get justice from the election petition tribunal for Bauchi State”, Farouk had said during an interview with journalists in Bauchi.

It would also be recalled that Farouk Mustapha and the NNPP had in their efforts to justify the alleged electoral frauds perpetrated in the Bauchi-North Senatorial District during the 2019 senatorial election invited several witnesses and tendered 745 exhibits of more than 700 pages.

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