Tribunal reserves judgment in Osun governorship election petition

The Osun state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Apo District of Abuja on Thursday reserved its judgment in the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke challenging the outcome of the September 2018 governorship election in the state.

The petitioners had challenged the declaration of Adegboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and hearing has been ongoing.

On Thursday, after listening to final arguments and adoption of written addresses by lawyers to the parties, tribunal Chairman, Justice Ibrahim Sirajo informed the parties that judgment has been reserved to a future date to be communicated to them 48 hours before the delivering date.

Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) appeared for Oyetola; Akin Olujinmi (SAN) represented the APC, while Lasco Pwahomdi appeared for INEC.

In adopting their separate final addresses, Olanipekun, Olujinmi and Pwahomdi urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition on the grounds that the petitioners have failed to prove their case.

But, lawyer to the petitioners, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), while adopting his final address, urged the tribunal to uphold the petition and grant all the reliefs prayed for.

Thursday’s proceeding at the tribunal was attended by the Governor Adegboyega Oyetola with some state government officials. He however, declined to speak with the media, who sought his views after the tribunal’s sitting.

On his part, Senator Adeleke, who had attended the tribunal’s sittings during the trial period was absent on Thursday.

Olanipekun, while adopting his final address, noted that the petition was full of confusing claims and betrayed the petitioners’ lack of understanding of the nation’s election petition jurisprudence.

According to Olanipekun the petitioners had contradicted themselves, declaring that “in pages 37, 38 and 39, the petitioners are presenting a different case entirely from their pleadings. The petition is a bedlam of confusion.”

Olanipekun noted that the petitioners have admitted breaching the electoral law by seeking that some of their votes be quashed.

He relied on a decision of the Court of Appeal given on Wednesday in the motion filed by the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar and urged the tribunal to decline the petitioners’ prayer to void the guideline issued by INEC for the conduct of the election.

In a similar argument, Olujinmi faulted the evidence given by 63 polling agents called as witnesses by the petitioners, asserting that, though the petitioners called 80 witnesses in all, 63 who were polling unit agents gave common evidence by saying similar things and using almost exactly the same words.

Olujinmi also argued that the evidence by the 74th witness, who was the state polling agent, amounted to hearsay evidence because he admitted getting the information from the documents submitted to him.

He urged the tribunal to ignore the various documents tendered by the petitioners, which he said they merely dumped on the tribunal without demonstrating their link to the case.

But, Ikpeazu in his counter arguments urged the tribunal to disregard the issues raised by the respondents’ lawyers and faulted the written addresses by the second and third respondents, which he argued, were not filed as required by law.

He said there was no confusion as it relates to the case of the petitioners, adding that the respondents’ claim of existence of confusion betrayed their misunderstanding of the case.

Ikpeazu said the petitioners’ case was that based on the result of the election of September 22, the first petitioner, having satisfied the provision of Section 179 (2) of the constitution, ought to be declared as having won the election.

He faulted the respondents’ argument that the petitioners dumped documents on the tribunal, arguing further that contrary to the impression created by the respondents, the petitioners effectively demonstrated all the documents, including the certified true copies of the result sheets, which he said were riddled with alterations.

He queried the powers of INEC to alter election results and urged the tribunal to hold in favour of the petitioners.