LAGOS, Nigeria

Nigeria's Appeal Court on Thursday upturned an earlier ruling declaring an opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) candidate winner of the southwest Osun governorship ballot.

The tribunal had in a split ruling on March 22 declared PDP's Ademola Adeleke winner of the September 2018 governorship poll, voiding the victory of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Gboyega Oyetola as declared by the electoral commission.

The election was first held on Sep. 22, but the electoral body declared it inconclusive and later conducted a supplementary poll. While Ademola was leading in the September ballot, Oyetola emerged victorious after the supplementary poll.

Voiding the supplementary vote as unlawful, the tribunal had held that Adeleke should have been declared winner based on the first ballot.

But the Appeal Court -- also in a four-to-one split judgment -- said the tribunal's proceedings and ruling were void and unknown to the law partly because the judge who authored it was absent for most of the time the election petition was heard.

The court also held that the tribunal lacked the powers to declare Adeleke the winner after canceling the make-up poll, saying it should have called for a rerun.

"I declare the entire proceedings and the judgment of the Osun State Governorship Tribunal a nullity. I hereby set aside the entire proceedings including the judgment," Jummai Sankey, head of the appeal panel, said in the lead judgment.

She said the court should have ordered a retrial of the case but did not because the time allowed for election petition hearings had lapsed.

The new judgment has dashed the hopes of the PDP which was looking for an entry into a region mostly dominated by the ruling APC.