The Ogun State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Isabo, Abeokuta, on Saturday night upheld the victory of Governor Dapo Abiodun as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission after the March 18 governorship election in the state.
Delivering the 11-hour judgment, the Chairman of the Tribunal, Hamidu Kunaza, said the petitioner, the Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate in the election, Ladipupo Adebutu, and his party failed to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.
Adebutu had asked the tribunal to quash Abiodun’s victory for not complying with the Electoral Act of 2022, corrupt practices and for not being qualified to have contested the 2023 governorship election in the state.
In the alternative, the petitioner prayed for an order of the tribunal directing 1st respondent (INEC) to conduct fresh election in the 99 polling units which cut across 41 wards and 16 Local Government Areas of Ogun State where elections were either not held and/or cancelled due to disruption and over-voting.
About a month ago, the counsel for Adebutu, Mr Chris Uche, in his final written address urged the tribunal to grant all the reliefs sought by the petitioner, including the disqualification of Abiodun as a candidate in the March 18 election.
According to him, about 40,891 votes were wrongfully credited to the governor.
However, counsel for INEC, the first respondent, Remi Olatunbora (SAN), disagreed with Uche, calling on the tribunal to dismiss the petition “for being absolutely unmeritorious and a total waste of the judiciary’s precious time.”
Olatubora said, “All the bags and envelopes of evidence hauled into this tribunal and tendered from the bar are absolutely inadmissible.”
On his part, the counsel for the governor, the second respondent, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), also urged the tribunal to dismiss the petition, describing the exhibits tendered by the petitioners so as “worthless, valueless, baseless and should have been voided ab initio”.
He added, “The position of the law is that an unsigned document is worthless. The principle of margin of lead cannot be a ground for a petition. I therefore urged your lordships to dismiss this petition.”
Counsel for the APC, the third respondent, Onyechi Ikpeazu, noted that the petitioners raised allegations of non-compliance in six local government areas but failed to mention the polling units.
In his judgment, Kunaza said since the law says that the onus is on him who asserts to prove, the witness statements the petitioners wished to rely on were very similar despite not being from the same polling units and were therefore rejected.
The tribunal said none of the witnesses who claimed to be polling agents presented evidence of being agents – noting that they did not present appointment letters as agents or agent cards used during the elections. Similarly, sole witnesses who testified as voters did not establish that they were voters in the polling units they testified about and such their testimonies were disregarded
The tribunal said it was not persuaded on the allegation that the governor was once detained in the United States. It went further to say that the petitioners had not proved that it was the governor’s fingerprints that were on the jail intake document.
It noted further that the petitioners did not link the governor to the name Shawn Michael on the document and that the witness who tendered it didn’t say how he came about the document, having conceded that he had never been to Florida before his testimony.
Kunaza added that assuming the governor was truly the person arrested in the jail intake document, the constitution disqualifies a candidate for a conviction within the last 10 years preceding the election but that the incident in the jail intake form occurred in 1986 – about 37 years ago, hence the ground upon which the petitioners were seeking the disqualification of Abiodun was thereby struck out.
On the allegations of vote-buying against the petitioner, the tribunal said although cash cards were produced by the second petitioner, Adebutu, the cards were funded on March 16 and 17, 2023 (eve of the elections) and that the cards somehow found their way to some polling units on Election Day, but that the respondents failed to prove vote-buying allegations beyond all reasonable doubts. Hence, it was described as failed and was resolved in favour of the petitioners.
The tribunal also held that it was wrong for Adebutu to have used the word “purported” to describe results of the governorship election as announced by INEC, an agency of the government that is constitutionally empowered to do so, saying the usage of the word “purported” insinuated that the results were mere rumours and that he might have come before the tribunal to argue based on mere rumours rather than established facts.
In its ruling, the tribunal asserted, “Petitioners have a duty, as outlined in the Schedule, to plead the election results as officially announced. Regrettably, the petitioners failed to fulfil this duty. Instead, they used the word ‘purportedly’ when describing the election results, a term that, according to the dictionary, implies unverified rumours.
“Therefore, the court finds that the petitioners should have challenged the officially announced results, not unsubstantiated rumours.”
The tribunal said it deemed the petition as legally incompetent due to what it termed its fundamental flaws.
Kunaza while affirming Abiodun’s victory as declared by INEC on March 20, 2023 said that the petition of the petitioners lacked merit and was therefore “dismissed”.
