This is an appeal against the judgment of the Governorship/Legislative House of Assembly Election Tribunal of Gombe State delivered on the 19th day of March. 1999, in which it dismissed the appellant's petition again the return of 1st respondent as member of House of Assembly of Gombe State representing Akko West Constituency.

The appellant who was the petitioner before the lower Tribunal petitioned against the election of the 1st respondent on the grounds that the collation of results from Kashere Ward was inconclusive as the results of 12 units from that ward were not entered on Form EC & B(1), and that the 1st respondent was not duly elected by the majority of lawful votes cast at election. The 2nd - 6th respondents had earlier declared the Respondent elected with 14,163 votes as against appellant's 12,626 votes.

The appellant called 2 witnesses to prove his case and also gave testimony on his own behalf. The 1st respondent also gave evidence and called two witnesses, but as it turned out, the Tribunal found that the 1st respondent's reply to the petition was filed out of time. And therefore, he had failed to join issues with the appellant. This meant that he did not defend the action by a way of reply.

The 2nd - 6th respondents filed a reply to the petition but failed to give evidence in support of it. The result was that at the end of the taking of evidence by the Tribunal, the appellant's petitions stood virtually unchallenged.

The appellant's case before the Tribunal was that the Returning Officer i.e. the 2nd respondent refused to collate the results from 12 Polling Units of Kashere Ward on the ground that there were alterations in the result sheets submitted from this Ward.

Those results were tendered before the Tribunal as Exhibits A1-A12. The trial tribunal in its judgment found that the 2nd respondent was wrong in failing to collate the results in Exhibits A1-A2 as the alterations contained therein did not mean that the results were inaccurate. The Tribunal then collated the results in Six of these Polling Stations and rejected the results in Six, namely; Exhibits A1, A6, A7, A8, A9 and A11 on the ground that there were over-voting and other electoral defects in these results.

It then found after adding the results to the existing results of the parties that the appellant had 13,912 votes while the 1st respondent had 14,551 votes and declared 1st respondent duly elected and dismissed the appellant's petition. Aggrieved by that decision, the appellant appealed to this Court