Chairman of the 2019 Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, on Wednesday withdrew from the panel for “personal reasons,” Concise News has learned.
The withdrawal of the President of the Court of Appeal from the tribunal followed allegations of possible bias leveled against her by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The party had specifically said Bulkachuwa’s husband, Adamu Bulkachuwa, contested and won the Bauchi North Senatorial District election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the February 23, 2019 poll.
But the five-man panel of the tribunal, in a unanimous ruling, dismissed an application from PDP seeking the withdrawal of Bulkachuwa from the tribunal.
Justice Olabisi Ige, who read the lead ruling of the panel, held that the relationship between Justice Bulkachuwa and her husband, who is a senator-elect, and her son Aliyu Abubakar, a governorship aspirant, was not weighty enough to infer that she would be biased in her handling of the proceedings of the panel.
But Justice Bulkachuwa said, “I am recusing myself from the panel for personal reasons,” as she, however, expressed joy that the matter had been settled “based on facts and the law” so that “another female judge will no longer have to face what I have faced.”
The PDP and its presidential candidate in the election, Atiku Abubakar, are challenging the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC at the tribunal.
