The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, on Wednesday withdrew as a member of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
This followed allegations of likelihood of bias leveled against her by the Peoples Democratic Party, and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
Although the five-man panel of the tribunal, in a unanimous ruling dismissed the application, but Bulkachuwa, said she was withdrawing for “personal reasons”.
Justice Olabisi Ige, who read the lead ruling of the panel, held that the relationship between Justice Bulkachuwa and her husband, Adamu Bulkachuwa, who is a senator-elect, and her son Aliyu Abubakar, a governorship aspirant, both on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, was not weighty enough to infer that she would be biased in her handling of the proceedings of the panel.
Justice Ige also ruled that no inference of likelihood of bias could be inferred from the speech delivered by Justice Bulkachuwa at the inaugural sitting of the tribunal on May 8 that she had pre-judged the petitioners’ petition.
All the members of the panel, including Justice Bulkachuwa, agreed with the lead ruling.
Despite that, Justice Bulkachuwa said, “I am recusing myself from the panel for personal reasons