Once You Can Read, Write, Understand, You Can Stand For Election – Tanko Yakassai

* Says he is not surprised at presidential election tribunal
verdict

Second Republic politician, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, has said that
he was not surprised by the verdict of the presidential election
petition tribunal which affirmed President Muhammad Buhari as the
winner of the presidential elections conducted by the Independent
National Election Commission (INEC) earlier in the year.

Alhaji Tanko, in his reaction to the verdict, during a telephone
conversation with our correspondent in Kano on Wednesday night
declared: “I’m not surprised. It (verdict) did not come to me as a
surprise in any way.”

Alhaji Tanko explained that his mindset about election petition
tribunals at the presidential level is that they actually do not
and would not change the outcomes of presidential elections in
Nigeria.

He, however, declared that “this is not to say that I have
questions about the integrity of the justices of the tribunal that
handed the presidential election petition.”

On the contrary, he appreciated the way and manner in which they
carefully unbundled and addressed, one by one, a number of issues
that bordered on technicalities, instead of lumping them together
with the substantive petition of the petitioners.

He also observed that the verdict had finally put to rest the
issue of certificate as a the sole basis of qualification for
elections in Nigeria, adding that according to the tribunal, “once
you can read and write and understand, you are presumed to have
attained the equivalent of a secondary school certificate and can,
therefore, stand for elections at any level.”

Asked if he thinks the Atiku Abubakar’s camp would appeal the
judgement, he replied: “I have not met with them; I don’t know, but
let us wait and see.”

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