The Supreme Court has affirmed the election of Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressive Congress (APC) as Governor of Lagos State, dismissing the appeal filed by Labour Party (LP)’s Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour.

In a unanimous decision by a five-member panel, the Supreme Court threw out two separate appeals that challenged his return as the winner of the governorship election held on March 18 as lacking merit.

The LP and its candidate, Rhodes-Vivour, had asked the court to determine whether Sanwo-Olu, was qualified to contest the election, because his deputy and running mate, Obafemi Hamzat, has dual citizenship.

According to the LP, the Lagos State deputy governor took the citizenship of the United States of America, USA.

They said that since Hamzat by his action, was constitutionally ineligible to contest the election, it invalidated Sanwo-Olu’s candidature at the election.

However, in its lead judgement that was delivered by Justice Mohammed Garba Lawal, the Supreme Court said there was no evidence that Sanwo-Olu’s deputy denounced his Nigerian citizenship.

The Court stated that there is no law stripping a Nigerian citizen by birth from enjoying his status, rights, and privileges owing to the acquisition of the citizenship of another country through naturalization.

It endorsed the decision of the Appeal Court which affirmed the judgement of the tribunal that Sanwo-Olu and Hamzat were not disqualified from contesting the governorship election.

Consequently, it dismissed Rhodes-Vivour’s appeal as lacking in merit.

Sanwo-Olu was re-elected Lagos State governor after after polling a total of 762,134 votes.

Rhodes-Vivour of the Labour Party scored 312,329 votes to finish second and Abdul-Azeez Adediran aka Jandor of the People Democratic Party (PDP) was third with 62,449 votes.
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