15th January, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
A chieftain of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Buba Galadima, reveals that the Supreme Court judgment averted a national crisis by not removing Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State during its epochal judgments last Friday.
Galadima also congratulated President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for not interfering with the independence of the judiciary though his partyman, Nasir Gawuna, was involved in the matter.
“I am congratulating Mr President for not interfering with the judiciary because Nigeria could have been on fire by now if what happened on Friday did not happen,” the NNPP chieftain said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
“I congratulate him (Tinubu) for having the strength of character and you can see that peace has pervaded the whole of Nigeria and our rating in the eyes of the world has come out.”
Last Friday, the apex court delivered judgements in eight governorship disputes, upturning the verdicts of lower courts in three of the cases, setting a precedent rare as hen’s teeth in the nation’s judiciary.
Of the eight cases, those of Kano, Zamfara and Plateau eerily stood out as the Supreme Court overruled the earlier decisions of the tribunal and the appellate court to reinstate the governors in the three states, a development that has been most applauded by opposition NNPP and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who now control Kano; as well as Plateau and Zamfara, respectively.
Before Friday’s judgement on Kano governorship dispute, tension was high and anxiety palpable in the North-West state which has been a battleground between APC gladiators like ex-Kano governor and current national chairman of the ruling party, Abdullahi Ganduje; as well as opposition heavyweights like 2023 NNPP presidential candidate, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
Though NNPP’s Yusuf and Kwankwaso’s ally was declared as winner of the March 2023 poll by the electoral umpire, both the tribunal and the appellate court subsequently sacked Yusuf and declared APC’s Gawuna as the winner of the election, sparking pockets of violence-tainted demonstrations in the ancient city of Kano.
Yusuf approached the apex court to seek redress, and the justices reversed his sack and declared him as the duly elected governor last Friday, eliciting wild-spread jubilation from NNPP supporters and red-capped Kwankwasiyya members in Kano.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Galadima said there was a plan to wrest power from the NNPP in Kano as the party kicked out the APC from the seat of power in the last poll.
“There was a plan to take Kano by force from every level,” he alleged, even as he congratulated the Supreme Court for “restoring the honour, dignity of the judiciary”.
“If they had ruled otherwise, they could have been stoned on the street of Nigeria and nobody could be able to ride a car with the inscription of Supreme Court of Nigeria, and there would have been a total of confidence in the judiciary and I don’t think anybody would ever dream of going to the Supreme Court to seek redress,” the NNPP chieftain said.