Tribunal Takes Fresh Action On ‘Okada Rider’ Who Won House Of Reps Seat On Labour Party’s Platform

The National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Kaduna has upheld the victory of Donatus Mathew who contested and won the Kaura Federal Constituency seat on the platform of the Labour Party (LP) in the last general elections.

TrackNews Media reports Mathew was an Okada rider when he contested the election held on February 25, 2023, and defeated all other aspirants for the legislative seat.

On Friday, the tribunal affirmed his victory and dismissed the petition brought by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) House of Representatives candidate for Kaura Federal Constituency, Gideon Gwani.

Gwani, a Minority whip in the House of Representatives in the 9th National Assembly had approached the tribunal to challenge and invalidate the election of his Labour Party (LP) counterpart.

However, Justice F.A. Fiberesima on behalf of the three-man panel of the tribunal while delivering judgment on the case on Friday, dismissed the petition against the LP lawmaker and ordered the PDP candidate to pay N 1.6 million damages to Donatus.

The counsel to the respondent, Zakari Sogfa told newsmen on Friday that two prayers were brought by the petitioner against his client but were dismissed by the tribunal.

“The first prayer was that the Respondent, Donatus was not qualified to contest the election that produced him as his party’s flag bearer for Kaura Federal Constituency.

”He based that conclusion on the ground that Donatus was not sponsored by his political party and that there were electoral malpractices in five areas, but the two prayers were struck out by the Tribunal for lack of merit.”

He revealed that the tribunal further ruled that Gwani did not have the right to determine a political party who should sponsor its candidate other than who should fly its flag and how it should go with its elections as such were pre-election matters.