₦airaland Forum

pryncipal:
Also live on M4 sport. Eutelsat 9e

The Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal has delivered its ruling on an exparte application brought by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to cross-check all materials used for the September 22 and 27 governorship poll.

In the ruling, the party was granted the permission to inspect, examine, scan and photocopy all rejected ballot papers and other election materials used for the election.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the PDP candidate in the election, Ademola Adeleke, filed a petition last Tuesday at the tribunal sitting in Osogbo to challenge the victory of the governor-elect, Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Mr Adeleke, who claimed he polled the highest number of votes in the election, asked the tribunal to cancel the victory of Mr Oyetola and declare him the winner of the election.

On Thursday, members of the PDP stormed the state high court in Osogbo, the state capital, where the election petition tribunal is sitting and blocked its entrance. The alleged that the tribunal had been disbanded by the president of the court of appeal.

Meanwhile, the head of media and publicity of the Court of Appeal, Sa’adatu Musa, in a message sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, stated that the tribunal was “only reshuffled and not disbanded.”

However, on Monday, the tribunal said the two applications by the PDP were aimed at serving the petitions and other processes on the second and third respondent respectively.

According to a judge, Peter Obiora, who delivered the ruling on behalf of the chairman of the tribunal, Muhammad Siraju, the essence of granting the applications was “to bring the proceedings to the attention of the respondents in the substantial suit”.

He said the parties involved should be assured that the tribunal would do everything constitutionally possible to ensure justice prevails.

While addressing the public, the applicant’s counsel, Nathaniel Oke, said the applications was to allow them to properly serve the second respondent (Gboyega Oyetola) and third respondent (APC).


The tribunal, after granting the applications also said the respondents (Gboyega Oyetola and APC) are to serve as observers during the exermination and inspection of the election materials.

Speaking with PREMIUM TIMES on Monday, the PDP head of media and public communication, Bamidele Salam, confirmed the ruling. He noted that all hands should be on deck as events unfold.

The APC director of publicity, Kunle Oyatomi, in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday evening, had charged the PDP to respect the tribunal’s processes.

“Let the justice system plays itself out and our politicians are obligated to respect the decisions of the court,” Mr Oyatomi said.

monkautos:
This guy no go face kaduna crisis, ganduje bribe scandal and other serious things

SarkinYarki:
Dicipline them with imposition?

Racoon:
Thought Oshiomole is the best thing to happen to the APC-the action man?

***Insists Party Is in Safe hands

The National Chairman of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has raise an alarm, accusing some unnamed party stalwarts of frustrating his plans to re-position the APC even as he alleged a clandestine move on their part with the ultimate aim of passing a no confidence vote on him.

This is as the Chairman however assured that the party under him is in safe hands as it marches on sure-footing to victory in the 2019 general elections.

He made the allegation on Sunday in Abuja in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Simon Ebebgulem, adding that “This is the overarching mission of the national working committee, NWC, of the party under his leadership”,

The statement noted that the suggestion in some quarters, “especially by one of the presidential aspirants on the platform of the party, Alhaji Mumakai Unagha, that the APC cannot win with Oshiomhole as published at page 42 of Saturday Vanguard of October 20, 2018, is therefore unfair, denigrating and baleful of Comrade Oshiomhole’s persona and commitment to a rejuvenated winning machine that the APC typifies.

“The totality of Unagha’s claims, without necessarily addressing them one after the other, tallies with cooked-up narratives being sponsored by some influential stakeholders in their respective states that Comrade Oshiomhole is responsible for all the problems in the APC at the moment.

“These influential stakeholders, according to grapevine, have begun to mobilise to pass a no-confidence vote in the leadership of Oshiomhole, having failed to impose their preferred candidates on the party in the nomination process”.

The statement reads further; “Comrade Oshiomhole did not become national chairman of the governing party to bring it down a notch from the pedestal of its 2015 electoral victory let alone to preside over its liquidation.

“Rather, his single-minded goal, from the outset of his declaration of interest in the position, was to deploy his capacity in helping to strengthen and reposition the party as a truly supreme and disciplined political entity.

“Although, it might appear fortuitous to some persons that he became national chairman at the threshold of the 2019 general election; the truth is that there is no accident in predestination.

“We must appreciate the fact that it has pleased the Almighty God to place him in the saddle of APC leadership at this time for a purpose. “The purpose has begun to manifest in its vast flourish and ramifications: instilling discipline, ensuring party supremacy, promoting due process, dealing with impunity and executive arrogance wherever they manifest to undermine intra-party electoral processes in the states.

“From the outset, we never expected that those who cherished and supported the status quo, which Comrade Oshiomhole supplanted, would cave in easily under the magnitude of the current political revival that he spearheads. “Indeed, while the progressives are enamored of change, the conservatives find it difficult to embrace it. That is the current reality in the deliberate effort to rebrand the APC.

“Again, we were not, in the least, deluded that the process of rebranding or rewriting the narrative of the four-year old party would be easy. What we are witnessing in the APC today is Comrade Oshiomhole’s adroit management of the strains and pains that accompany the birth of a resuscitated governing party.

“The leadership provided in the recently-held primary elections and the large-scale integrity of the processes are developments that should hence serve as exemplars in the administration of governing parties.

“Indeed, the message therein is very clear that the party, and not pseudo political empires in the states, has the power to superintend the primary elections for the nomination of the party’s candidates in the general election.

“While the party will not surrender its functions, which are constitutionally circumscribed, to any other entities, it will always be ready to moderate the divergent tendencies and mediate the disparate political camps in the interest of party cohesion.

“This is one of the hardnosed truths that the Comrade Oshiomhole-led NWC preaches and practises with an apostolic zeal to the chagrin of some influential stakeholders in the states.

“Comrade Oshiomhole envisions an APC that is capacitated to pragmatically build a corpus of leadership and membership that do not only submit to the high ideal of party supremacy but also the credo of party discipline.

“These-party supremacy and discipline- are two fundamentals that had been eroded even before the emergence of the Oshiomhole leadership. It is sad that while the national chairman is working round the clock, some stakeholders have thrown selfish political agendas into the mix to threaten the building of institutional capacity for the APC.

“Rather than resort to needless perfidy at the threshold of a general election, we call on them to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, bolstered by the fact that the Oshiomhole leadership is propelled more by its interest in propriety in which victory for the party could be grounded. The crime committed by Comrade Oshiomhole’s leadership is its disdain for impunity and circumvention of due process perpetrated in some of the states at the pleasure of some influential stakeholders.

“Overall, Comrade Oshiomhole has not, since stepping in the saddle, taken any unilateral decision in the running of the party affairs. All decisions, so far taken, passed through the mills of NWC deliberative sessions and enjoyed unanimous resolutions. The records are there. History will justify Comrade Oshiomhole and posterity will vindicate him.

“Therefore, with eyes firmly fixed on the general election, especially the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari in the scheduled February 16 poll, Comrade Oshiomhole assures all stakeholders in the APC of his respect for them. He assures them of his readiness to work with them for the good of the party.

“The comrade chairman also proposes a common front in the general election and believes that the APC, as a governing party, will do a commemorative post mortem next year to appraise and reappraise the political developments and decisions that presaged the election, which it would win emphatically”.

mbuaba:
working