PRESS STATEMENT
07/04/2023

Oyetola, APC Appeal At the Supreme Court is a Waste of Time, It clings nowhere -Osun PDP

The leadership of Osun People's Democratic Party (PDP) under the Caretaker Chairmanship of Dr Akindele Adekunle have been reliably informed by the legal team of the party that the defeated former Governor of Osun State, Mr Gboyega Oyetola and his philistinic rejected party (APC) in Osun State have filed an appeal at the supreme court of Nigeria against Osun People's will and the Appeal Court judgment that vindicated and validated the mandate of His Excellency, Senator Ademola Nurudeen Jackson Adeleke as the Executive Governor of Osun State and the government PDP is running in the state.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is within their inalienable right to seek redress in court according to the laws of the land, 'we want to emphatically tell them that, this is an effort in futility, a waste of time and an unproductive adventure for them.'

You cannot loose at both the people's court and the legal court and still expect a miracle or dubious ways to foist yourself on the people who have repeatedly shown they don't want you.

The evil thoughtline of a fourth runner-up becoming the substanstive beneficiary of a court judgment can never hold water here in Osun. No matter the devilish plotting, Osun People's will, will continue to triumph as Governor Ademola Adeleke is the new Sheriff in town in Osun and will continue to be till his tenure mandatorily ends.

We believe in the Lord Justices of the Supreme Court of Nigeria to give right verdict on the people's will in Osun as we're confident they'll uphold the tenet of fairness and justice in delivering their judgment anyday it is on the Osun Guber case.

We commend the Lord Justices of the appellate court for setting good template for justice and throwing to the dustbin of history the controversial 'Buga Judgment' of the Tribunal. We're confident our very revered and impeccable legal personalities of the Supreme Court will also ensure justice, fairness and Osun People's will subsist and stands firmly.

The light has come in Osun, and no darkness will overshadowed it again.

Succinctly, IMOLE OSUN HAS COME STAY, no Jupiter can change it, no matter how hard they try.

Signed:
Dr Akindele Adekunle,
State Caretaker Chairman,
Osun PDP.

Osun Governorship Verdict And Issues Before The Supreme Court

The Court of Appeal judgement upholding the election of Governor Ademola Adeleke is widely adjudged as one of the best in recent judicial history. Compared with the judgement of the Tribunal, the Appeal Court restored judicial normalcy based on laws and precedents. The Supreme Court is not likely to have problem with upholding the Court of Appeal ruling as the Tribunal judgement was adjudged locally and internationally as a misnomer and an aberration in the hall of justice.

That notwithstanding, beneficiaries of the miscarriage of Justice at the lower Court are not likely to relent until the last lap. A look at a recent article written by Mr Samson Owoyokun, an aide of Mr Oyetola , confirms that the plot to usurp the mandate of the people is still in play. In the article titled “THE NEGATIVE IMPLICATION OF THE OSUN STATE APPEAL COURT JUDGEMENT ON OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND DEMOCRATIC PROCESS”, Mr Owoyokun struggled so hard to convince himself and his cohorts that the appellate court judgement on the governorship contest did not serve justice.

By way of foundation, Mr Owoyokun suggested that the judgement of the Appeal Court was premised on voters’ register, which he spared no effort in playing down as no longer necessary in establishing over-voting in an election. But that was not the true reflection of what transpired at the Court of Appeal. This is because the judgement of the Court of Appeal did not only uphold justice but also saved our democracy from imminent collapse.

This was even made obvious by Mr. Owoyokun in his piece, especially in the excerpt of the judgement he quoted. For clarity, page 41 of the lead judgement by Justice M.L Shuaibu, which he referenced in his article, reads as follows: “In the instant case, Exhibit BVR clearly is report from backend server of the 3rd Respondent (INEC) and not PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF ACCREDITATION AND TRANSMISSION OF RESULTS IN THE DISPUTED POLLING UNITS (Emphasis is mine). This is premised on the fact that BVAS transmissions are not done instantly from the polling units; furthermore, the Tribunal was wrong to have admitted and acted on the said evidence in isolation of the voters register for the disputed polling units.”

From the above, it was clear that the voters’ register was just one of the premises applied by the Justices of the Appeal Court in invalidating the Tribunal judgement. The judgement upheld the arguments advanced by the appellants that the BVAS machines used in the election hold more relevance in establishing over-voting as alleged by Oyetola and the APC. “Apart from failing to tender the register of voters, they also did not tender the BVAS devices from which the data was extracted,” Justice Shuaibu had held in his judgement.

This very fact was established by the INEC recently when in an affidavit filed at the Presidential Election Tribunal in the Court of Appeal in Abuja, asserted the primacy of the BVAS machines over every other source on datas realized from elections. Tanimu Inuwa, SAN, while arguing an application for the need to allow the reconfiguration of the BVAS machines used for the presidential and national assembly elections in order to use them for the governorship and state assemblies election before the panel, noted that “We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS machine will be lost as we transfer all the data in the BVAS to our backend server.” His argument was strengthened by INEC’s Deputy Director, ICT Department, Lawrence Bayode, who pointedly noted that “before purging is approved by the BVAS devices, the data on the BVAS devices have to be uploaded to the accreditation backend server.”

The clear deduction from the above is that, contrary to Oyetola and his party’s insistence, any data on the backend server originated from the BVAS machines, hence, placing the device as the primary source of evidence for accreditation data or any other data for an election. If the INEC still needs to extract accreditation data and results on the BVAS machines to the backend server after 12 days of conducting the presidential and national assembly elections, then one can realize the inherent deficiency of the incomplete server report that Oyetola and the APC relied upon at the lower court.

Access reaching further
It was on the strength of this simple truth that Justice C. Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo held that “It was therefore wrong of the trial Tribunal to determine the petition based on Exhibit BVR which exhibit is amenable to continuous update.” Like so many election deniers, Mr Owoyokun chooses not to interrogate this conclusion, but rather twist the reality of the judgement of the Appeal Court.

But that was not all. Justice Shuaibu held that while Oyetola and the APC tried so hard to hide under Section 137 of the Electoral Act, 2022, in prosecuting its case, they nonetheless made “PW1 gave oral evidence ostensibly to demonstrate over-voting from the report, Exhibit BVR.” However, the witness, who though, was presented as an expert by the Petitioners at the Tribunal, was an APC member and again, did not proffer his qualifications before the Tribunal to confirm his status. In essence, Justice Shuaibu held that “The provision of Section 83 (3) of the Evidence Act, 2011, is to the effect that evidence made by a person interested at the time when the proceedings were pending or anticipated, involving a dispute as to any fact which the statement must tend to establish is inadequate.”

Even more, is the question of fair hearing, which the Appeal Court held was not accorded to Governor Adeleke, the PDP and INEC, at the Tribunal. In their separate judgements, all the three justices were unanimous in holding that the majority judgement at the Tribunal violated the defendants’ right to be heard in law and so, render the processes and decision arrived, in the end, a nullity.

Touching on this in her judgement, Justice C. Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo wrote that “With the terse and scanty reference to the various preliminary objections properly laid before the learned Tribunal and the lumping together of same without giving them individual and dispassionate consideration and determination, the Tribunal has failed in the performance of its statutory duty. Because the issue of jurisdiction as raised in the preliminary objections constitutes the livewire and access to the consideration and determination of the substantive issues before the Tribunal, the said Tribunal ought to have done better. The appellant as well as the 3rd and 4th respondents are in the circumstances robbed of their right to fair hearing and a miscarriage of Justice, which is capable of rendering the proceedings and Judgement of the Tribunal a nullity and of no effect.”

This finding was similar to that of Justice James Gambo Abundaga, who pointed out the refusal of the majority judgement of the Tribunal to consider the various applications by Governor Adeleke, the PDP and INEC at the Tribunal was denial of fair hearing, hence, occasioned miscarriage of justice. “It can not be gainsaid that this failure occasioned miscarriage of justice. It is settled law that where there is a denial of fair hearing, the proceedings in which it occurred is rendered null and void,” Justice Abundaga wrote in his judgement. The judge who quoted the Supreme Court decision in the case of Alexander & Ors v. Albert & Anor (2022) LPLER–56855 (SC) and several other authorities, went on to hold that “Therefore the breach of the Appellant’s right to fair hearing can lead me to no other option other than to declare the proceedings and judgement of the Tribunal null and void, and so declare. Accordingly, the entire proceedings and judgement is declared null and void for this reason.”

Clear enough, the decision of the Court of Appeal in upholding the election of Governor Adeleke is beyond the issue of voters’ register as Mr Owoyokun tried to portray. Even more, it is inconceivable to accept the argument of Mr Owoyokun that the voters register is no longer a critical part of our election with the advent of the Electoral Act, 2022. Perhaps, it will help to stress for Mr Owoyokun’s understanding that the voters register remains the very foundation that the BVAS machines rest on.

Aside from the fact that the register of voters in each polling unit is embedded in the BVAS machines, hence, its ability to identify and accredit registered voters, it is right to point out that voters must pass the physical verification on the voters register to be able to get a ballot paper to vote. Providing the voters register and other primary evidence, like the BVAS machines and form EC8A that were at the polling units on the day of the election, shouldn’t be a hard ask for anyone who is convinced that over-voting occurred and wants to prove it. Those are the primary pieces of evidence in the election along with party agents, which the APC and Oyetola, failed to present at the court.

Maybe because the primary pieces of evidence will not support their false claim and they want to seize on the confusion of a controversial secondary evidence to deliberately cancel the lawful votes of the eventual winner and subvert the will of the Osun people. This plot failed at the Appeal Court and it is the strong hope of the people of Osun that the Supreme Court reject the overreach of a mandate usurper and go ahead to affirm the election of Governor Adeleke. That will put a total end to the dangerous plot to damage our democracy, and in turn, the power of the people to choose who leads them will be asserted.

Sarafa Ibrahim writes from Osogbo, Osun State.

https://championnews.com.ng/osun-governorship-verdict-and-issues-before-the-supreme-court/

Rubbish I don't like it

Great141:
Rubbish I don't like it

oyetola the clueless party destroyer is a clueless goner and loser joor

Oyetola abeg rest.. the battle is over jare
.
Meanwhile at a cheap price Dm me for your logo and flyer design

Politics sometimes is a game of luck and try
PDP would have done the same thing if they are in APC shoe

Amen

He has the right to go to the Supreme Court. So let him try.
Unlike some IPOB terrorists that want to set the country on fire simply because they lost.

All we need is peace

Not for you to decide na..

Let him exercise his rights..

Atleast, he has the right to appeal to the Supreme Court..allow him waste his time..






"We commend the Lord Justices of the appellate court for setting good template for justice and throwing to the dustbin of history the controversial 'Buga Judgment' of the Tribunal"

Politicians sef...when judgement suits them, they will believe and commend the judiciary, singing high praises of the Judges...but, if otherwise, judgement becomes controversial and they will abide the judges involved

Should Supreme Court Judgement go against PDP, hope they will sing praises of the Judges

I think that Osun people prefer Ademola

Ok

NO NAAA.....LAWYERS MUST CHOP NAA

At this point, everything about Oyetola reeks of desperation.....

It's no longer about the people of Osun, it's now about himself/his ambition.

If the people of Osun are happy with Adeleke, why try to take the happiness away because of selfish reason?

I think Oyetola has some loopholes that he's trying to cover, and the only way he can cover it is by becoming the governor.

With time, breeze go blow and fowl yansh go open....For now, fingers crossed.

It's within his rights to appeal.... dead rubber though...

This is needless; and it doesn't change anything. Adeleke remains governor now and in the next 8 years. He's basically progressive like his father and brother before him. It's the politics of malice that made him move to PDP. His father was a junior colleague of Obafemi Awolowo. Who says he may not do a crossover? No be Nigerian politics?

Oyetola should rest

Ok

Oyetola will be back soon.

Morvick:
Oyetola abeg rest.. the battle is over jare
.
Meanwhile at a cheap price Dm me for your logo and flyer design

Peter Obi too should rest. Not so?

Oyetola and APC have a good grounds of appeal and it's 50:50 chance.

press9jatv:
oyetola the clueless party destroyer is a clueless goner and loser joor

Oyetola did not destroy the party. He refused to be bullied by aregbe and his followers.

You're the one panicking. You yourself are prejudging the supreme Court to intimidate them and threaten the rule of law. If it was not possible for a case to be won at the lower court, lost at the tribunal, won at appeal court, then lost finally at the supreme Court, the need to rest the judicial process at the supreme Court would not have been provided for in the electoral law. Your claim of the acceptation of the appeal court ruling ' by both local and international communities as ' the fairest in the history of the nation ' is an attempt to intimidate the justices of the Supreme Court and to threaten the rule of law. Courts do not act on sentiments, but on fine points of law.

Reason why most godfathers lost the person they picked to be governor was bullying.
If they allow them free hand, their good relationship will continue.
That is the strategy use by tinubu in lagos. That is why all those governors always stay with him.

Keep dreaming till the right time......
Pray it isn't the Nightmare part you wake into
DONCE

*THE NEGATIVE IMPLICATION OF THE OSUN STATE APPEAL COURT JUDGMENT ON OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND DEMOCRATIC PROCESS* by Samson Owoyokun

The seasoned public affairs analyst, Babajide Kolade Otitoju, said a fortnight ago that, “the recently concluded general election remains the freest and fairest since the advent of the present democratic adventure which started in 1999, especially with the introduction of BVAS machine.”

"The election," in his opinion, "gave the electorates the decisive power to freely elect their leaders across all levels without manipulation.”

Just like Otitoju, I hold that the era of multiplicity of ballot stuffing with already thumb-printed ballot papers, hijacking of election materials, multiple registrations and multiple voting, inflation of election result figures at collation centers, has gone, and has gone for real with the introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System ( BVAS).


No genuine patriot is willing to return to the dark age, like in 2003, when total number of votes announced in the presidential election in Ogun State, for example, was more than the number of registered voters!

Even in 2015 when a technology, smart card reader, was introduced into our electoral system, cunning politicians still devised avenues to circumvent the system. In one of the election tribunal cases reported in that election circle, it was said that 820 voters cast their ballot in a polling unit but only 370 of them used the card reader: all others filled the incidence forms. Strangely, when the petitioner's witness testified that only 370 voters voted in the particular polling unit under litigation, the names of the remaining 450 were appropriately ticked on the voters register, incidence forms filled and ballot papers used on their behalf!

That was where the case developed a K-leg because at the Supreme Court, it was affirmed that the card reader was not legally binding, as it was just part of the guidelines (manual) of the election, and not integral part of the electoral act. So, in this case, as it was in many cases where petitioners were able to prove over voting, using the reports of card reader, none of them secured victory at the Supreme Court. Verdicts against Card Reader occurred in: (Nyesom v Peterside (Rivers], Emmanuel v Umana [Akwa Ibom] and Okereke v Umani [Ebonyi), Ikpeazu vs Otti [Abia])


From the pronouncements of Their Lordships at the apex court, the supremacy of voters’ registers over card readers in matter relating to accreditation of voters was established.

In Okereke v Umani & 2 Ors, (SC.1004/2015.  Delivered on 5th February, 2015), His Lordship, Nweze, JSC., states as follows:

"Indeed, since the Guidelines and Manual (supra), which authorised the use and deployment of the electronic Card Reader Machine, were made in exercise of the powers conferred by the Electoral Act, the said card reader cannot, logically, depose or dethrone the Voters’ Register whose juridical roots are, firmly, embedded or entrenched in the self-same Electoral Act from which it (the Voter Register), directly, derives its sustenance and currency.”

However to remedy the inadequacies of our electoral law as to the use and legality of the technology for voter accreditation, the National Assembly, in 2022, made the use of technological device (BVAS device) mandatory for accreditation in our elections.

According to the new law, “To vote, the presiding officer shall use a smart card reader or any other technological device (in this case, BVAS) that may be prescribed by the commission, for the accreditation of voters, to verify, confirm or authenticate the particulars of the intending voter in the manner prescribed by the commission.”

This provision is absolute. The use of BVAS for accreditation is Alpha and Omega. It is primary. The voters register only plays an auxiliary role. It was on this basis the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal declared that the Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the July 16 governorship election, Adegboyega Oyetola, obtained the highest number of lawful votes, and therefore was the true winner of the contest.

But in the judgement which sent jitters to Nigerians, especially those who earlier celebrated the adoption of BVAS as a Game Changer in our electoral process, the Appeal Court led by Justice M. L. Shuaibu held that the voters register still has primacy in the election, therefore the judgement of the Osun State Tribunal should be invalidated. In page 41 of the Appeal court judgment, Justice Shuaibu wrote,

“In the instant case, Exhibit BVR clearly is report from backend server of the 3rd respondent (INEC) and not physical evidence of accreditation and transmission of results in the disputed polling units. THIS IS PREMISED ON THE FACT THAT BVAS TRANSMISSIONS ARE NOT DONE INSTANTLY FROM THE POLLING UNITS (Emphasis is mine); furthermore, the tribunal was wrong to have admitted and acted on the said evidence in isolation of the voters register for the disputed polling units.”

Reading the above, one is tempting to ask: upon which law and judicial precedent did the Appeal Court justices anchor their verdict?

Oddly, it was anchored on the old regime of the previous electoral act--- the act that was in place before the 2022 Electoral Act. Let's quote part of the judicial precedent cited by the Court of Appeal:

“In Abubakar vs INEC (2020 12 NWLR (pt. 1737)37 @128, the Supreme Court had held that voters register is the foundation of any competent election, without the voters register, it will be difficult to determine the actual numbers of voters in an election. And if the number of registered voters is not known, the court cannot determine whether the numbers of votes cast at the election are more than the voters registered to vote. Thus to prove over voting, the petitioner must tender the voters register and Forms EC8A so as to work out the difference of excess votes easily”

Given the above judgement vis-a-vis the new electoral act upon which the Osun governornship election was conducted, it is clear that the judgement of the Court of Appeal is a misintepretation of the law. The judicial precedent cited by the lords at the penultimate court is not relevant and is totally in contradiction to the newly signed and operational electoral act. The law at play in 2020, when the wise-men at the Supreme Court handed down the mentioned verdict, has been repealed; it is obsolete; so giving life to it now is patent abortion of justice. The 2022 electoral law, as encapsulated in Section 47 (2), gives complete power of accreditation to the BVAS device.

With the new law, a petitioner needs only two critical ingredients and valuable components to prove over-voting: the report of number of BVAS accredited voters officially issued by INEC and the Forms EC8A. No more, no less.

And the two documentary materials were what Gboyega Oyetola and his party, APC, presented and demonstrated in the tribunal. The CTC of Forms EC8A pleaded and presented as exhibits at the tribunal contained all essential information to prove whether over voting occurred or not. It is on the Form EC8A that you will see entries entered into columns like number of ballot papers (trio of used, unused and spoilt ones), rejected ballots, valid votes, and more importantly, number of accredited voters.

Indeed, the introduction of BVAS to our electoral system is a game changer, because without it, the hope of proving legitimate ballots, as Oyetola did in the election tribunal, would have been slim, if not impossible.

The importance of the machine and its enactment in the electoral act also reflected in the just completed governorship election in Abia State.

On March 20, the media space was awash with the news of the INEC stopping collation of results in the governorship election in the state, citing reason of nonconformity and discrepancies in the number of accredited figures. Results from 16 out of 17 LGAs had already been released before the halt. LP scored 171,747 while PDP scored 79,477. However, the magical votes of 100,000 for PDP from Obingwa LG, the incumbent governor's LG, was what sparked people's reaction and forced the electoral umpire to review the result. The electoral body resorted to the backend server to retreive the number of accredited voters and it was confirmed that only 27,664 voters were accredited in the local government, as against the concocted figures of over 100,000 the PDP masterminds wanted to smuggle into the record.

Recall that similar experience played out between the same incumbent, Okezie Ikpeazu and Alex Otti in 2015 when Otti's lead margin was swallowed by 82,240 votes returned from the same Obingwa LG. Regrettably, there was no backend server to run to for succour. But in 2023, backend server saved him!

Unfortunately, this problem-solving technology is what the justices of the Court of Appeal dubbed inconsequential in the current case of Adeleke v Oyetola. Sigh.

Unless the Supreme Court cures the stunted Appeal judgement delivered March 24, the gains the new technology was designed to achieve by the drafters of the new electoral act are on the verge of collapse and our electoral system is bound to suffer the debilitating effect of it. First, it will take away, completely, the management and custody of election from INEC as the reservoir of data, information and documents used in the conduct of any election from the commission as the only and substantive document to be relied upon by the court will be a forensic report from non-statutory agent, and not the authentic BVAS report generated from the INEC backend server.

Second, the experience will take us back to the crude, fraudulent, stone age of doctoring voters register, ignoring advancement of technological innovation and relying on manual operations of results where pliable presiding officers would tick names of unaccredited voters to perpetuate fraud and cover their tracks. Because this would embolden political actors to subvert the procedures for a credible, transparent, free and fair election in Nigeria, like it was done in Osun state on July 16th 2022 where many voted without PVC and due accreditation and sponsors of the perfidy turned around to blackmail the judiciary to get a "kosolowo eee" victory.

Owoyokun, a marketing and project management consultant, writes from Isokun Layout, Ilesa. Osun State