{"id":834,"date":"2023-03-10T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T11:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/?p=834"},"modified":"2023-03-10T11:45:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T11:45:05","slug":"just-in-supreme-court-sacks-shekarau-as-senator-elect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/2023\/03\/10\/just-in-supreme-court-sacks-shekarau-as-senator-elect\/","title":{"rendered":"Just In: Supreme Court Sacks Shekarau As Senator-elect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Supreme Court on Friday sacked Senator Ibrahim Shekarau as the candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party and recognised Senator Rufa\u2019i Hanga as the party\u2019s candidate for the 2023 general election.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The PUNCH reports that <a href=\"https:\/\/punchng.com\/nigeriaelections2023-ex-gov-shekarau-wins-kano-central-senatorial-seat\/\">Shekarau was declared the winner<\/a> of the 2023 Kano Central Senatorial District election under NNPP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Shekarau, a sitting senator was in the NNPP and was nominated to vie for the senatorial position under its platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">However, before the elections, he announced his defection from the NNPP and abandoned his senatorial ambition to join the Peoples Democratic Party.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But the Independent National Electoral Commission later insisted that it still recognised him as the legitimate NNPP candidate, even though the party replaced him with Hanga.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Shekarau, who is going to the red chamber for the second time, was declared by the returning officer of the senatorial district, Professor Tijjani Darma.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">According to INEC, Shekarau polled 456,787 votes to defeat the All Progressives Congress candidate, Alhaji Abdulkarim Zaura, who polled 168,677 votes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">However, the Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the nomination of Hanga as the NNPP\u2019s authentic candidate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In a unanimous judgement, Justice Inyang Okoro-led five-member panel of the court faulted INEC\u2019s refusal to replace Shekarau with Hanga after the former left the party for PDP before the election.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Justice Emmanuel Agim, who read the lead judgment, written by Justice Uwani Abba-Aji, dismissed the INEC appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The court, however, upheld the two earlier concurrent judgments by the Federal High Court and Court of Appeal, both in Abuja, that affirmed Hanga as the authentic candidate of NNPP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Details later\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court on Friday sacked Senator Ibrahim Shekarau as the candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party and recognised<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}