The President court of Appeal step aside...

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, has disqualified herself as a member of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

She announced her decision yesterday shortly after the tribunal had thrown out an application by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, seeking her disqualification from the panel on account of alleged likelihood of bias leveled against her.

The five-man panel 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 (APC), was not weighty enough to infer that she would be biased in her handling of the proceedings of the panel.