THE chances for the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to mount any significant challenge for the Kano State governorship position have been dealt a heavy blow as a Federal High Court has ordered the party to hold a fresh primary election.

This is coming barely five days to March 9, 2019, date for the governorship and state assembly elections in 29 out of the 36 states of the federation, including Kano State.

The ruling, delivered by Justice Lewis Allagoa on Monday, thus nullifies the candidature of Abba Kabir Yusuf, who, until the judgement, was the of the PDP governorship candidate in the election.

Yusuf is a son-in-law to Rabiu Kwankwanso, the former Governor of Kano State, who left the ruling All Progressives Congress for the PDP in late 2018.

Details of the judgement are still sketchy as at the time of this report but Justice Allagoa ordered the PDP in Kano State to organise a fresh primary election between Monday and Saturday, the day of the election.

The judgement followed a suit filed by one Ibrahim Al-Amin, a PDP gubernatorial aspirant, who had placed fifth in the contest for the governorship ticket but was dissatisfied with the process that led to the emergence of Yusuf as the party’s flagbearer.

The result of the Kano PDP governorship primary showed that Yusuf won with 2,421 votes, followed by Jafar Sani Bello who polled 1,258 votes, while Muhammad Sadiq Wali and Salihu Sagir Takai scored 167 had 95 votes respectively.

Ibrahim Al-Amin, the man who filed the court case that has now led to the nullification of the primary election, was said to have scored just 51 during the process.

When the primary election was conducted, a faction of the party had held a parallel primary election in Abuja which produced a different candidate, but the PDP National Executive Council recognised the election from which Yusuf, Kwankwanso’s son-in-law, emerged.

Monday’s court judgement for a fresh PDP governorship primary elections in Kano State will be a major boost to the current governor, Umar Ganduje, who is running for a second term in office on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.

Ganduje is the favourite for the governorship position especially given that the APC returned the highest number of votes for President Muhammadu Buhari in the just-concluded presidential election. Also, all the party’s candidates for the Senate and National Assembly positions were all returned elected.