Less than a week after the Court of Appeal sacked the speaker of the Bauchi House of Assembly, Abubakar Sulaiman, the appellate court sitting in Abuja, has also sacked the deputy speaker, Dahiru Barade
The sacked speaker and his deputy are members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.
The three-man panel of justices in its judgment nullified the judgment of the Bauchi State House of Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal, which had initially confirmed Barade as the duly elected representative for the Bauchi Central constituency.
The panel, therefore, ordered rerun elections in some polling units in the constituency, where the appellant, Aliyu Abdullahi Ilela, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) alleged over-voting.
The court ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to retrieve the Certificate of Return earlier issued to the Deputy Speaker and conduct a rerun election in the affected Polling Units.
In his reaction, counsel to the APC, UB Darazo, said that the judgment was just and fair, stating that there was indeed over-voting in some selected polling units.
According to him, in its judgment, the Appeal Court has ordered INEC to conduct rerun elections in the affected polling units.
Meanwhile, attempts to obtain a response from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were unsuccessful, as both the chairman, Hamza Koshe Akuyam, and the publicity secretary, Yayanuwa Zainabari, did not answer calls to their mobile phones.
The Nation reports that with the recent development, the State House of Assembly currently lacks full leadership, given that both the speaker’s and deputy speaker’s positions are presently unoccupied.
