Supreme Court Dismisses LP, PDP’s Appeals Affirms Sanwo-Olu’s Election

The supreme court has affirmed the election of Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as Lead Representative of Lagos State.

The five-member panel in a unanimous judgment conveyed by Justices Lawal Garba and Adamu Jauro, affirmed the declaration of the APC’s candidate as winner of the March 18, 2023 gubernatorial election, in the wake of dismissing two separate appeals challenging his victory.

Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party (LP), who came second and Abdulazeez Adediran popularly otherwise known as Jandor of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who came third had challenged the election of Sanwo-Olu on grounds of alleged anomalies, malpractices non-compliance as well as non-qualification.

They had explicitly contended that the Deputy Governor, who acquired citizenship of the United States of America, is not certified to contest for an elective position and as such his nomination as deputy Governor was illegal null and void.

They additionally argued that his alleged illegal nomination affects the qualification of Sanwo-Olu, thus the court ought to nullify their participation in the gubernatorial election.

Nonetheless, both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal in their respective decisions excused both appeals for failure to prove charges made in their petitions.

The apex court in its judgement, maintained that it has found no cogent explanation to go amiss from the concurrent judgments of the tribunal and Court of Appeal which maintained that Sanwo-Olu was legally elected as Lead Representative of Lagos State.

The appellate court in a unanimous judgement held that acquisition of a foreign national those do not bar any citizen by birth from contesting election.

Justice Lawal stated that the only condition a citizen with dual citizen can lose his right to be elected as governor is when he denounces his Nigerian citizenship by birth.

The apex court subsequently excused both appeals for lacking in merit.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the APC had polled 762,134 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Rhodes-Vivour, who scored 312,329 votes, with Jandor coming a distant third with 62,449 votes.