Two judges, Kumai Akaas and Paul Galinje, disagreed with the ruling that affirmed Mr Oyetola’s victory.
Premium Times reports that Justice Akaas accused Independent National Electoral Commission of rigging the polls during the rerun, while Justice Galinje argued that the courts should have given attention to the controversy over the rerun polls.
Justice Akaas said INEC had no cogent reason to have conducted a rerun in the first place.
“INEC is supposed to be an umpire not a partisan group. For INEC to have pronounced the election inconclusive showed that it had something up its sleaves. And it achieved that through the rerun,” said Mr Akaas who looked angry.
The blistering rebuke of the electoral body came at the Supreme Court’s ruling on the election dispute brought by Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party.
The two judges from a seven-member panel, disagreed with a majority ruling upholding the September 2018 election in Mr Oyetola’s favour.
The court, which had also
Supreme Court ruling and disagreement
The Supreme Court’s effective ruling, read by Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeal.
The court said Mr Obiora was evidently absent on February 6 based on the documents before it.
It said the failure of Mr Obiora to be present on that day meant that the tribunal lacked the authorities to have given any judgment on the matter.
In disagreeing, however, Justices Akaas and Galinje said although the absence of Mr Obiora should result in the nullification of the judgement of the election tribunal, “the only way to affirm that was by producing the original court records.”
They said the “the actual record of the tribunal was not before the court of appeal.”
“The onus is on the APC to have proven that Obiora did not sit on February, 6. They should have sworn an affidavit,” the judges said.
They also held that it has been the precedence of the Supreme Court that judges do not have to sign the certified true copies of the judgement.
