The Osun State gubernatorial election petition tribunal has been delayed for decision following the last arguments from the parties’ attorneys.
The tribunal’s chair, Justice Tertsea Kume, said that all parties will be informed of the ruling date.
According to PULSENETS, on December 20, 2022, the Tribunal postponed its meeting until January 13, 2023, to allow all parties to adopt their final speeches.
In his speech, Lateef Fagbemi, the lead attorney for former Osun State governor Adegboyega Oyetola, said that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) erred by issuing a synchronised report that was incongruous.
Fagbemi added that synchronisation was not taken into account by the Electoral Act of 2022.
According to him, “To allow INEC to have its way by the concept of synchronization, that means they can declare election one day and come the following day that result has not been synchronized and thereby decide who wins and not the electorates.
“The issue of result is different from accreditation. What is required is updating of result and not updating of accreditation.”
While urging the Tribunal to nullify the declaration of Ademola Adeleke as the winner of the July 16, 2022 gubernatorial election, he alleged that he had forged certificate.
“The testimonial says it was issued in 1988 about three years before Osun State came into existence when nobody knew that the State would be created in 1991,” he said.
Through its main attorney, Paul Ananaba, INEC, the first respondent, claimed that the petitioners’ claims about the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices were inaccurate.
In his words, “The BVAS reports tendered by the petitioners were incomplete because the INEC server had not completed the synchronization process when it was issued to them.”
Ananaba requested that the Tribunal reject the petitioner Adegboyega Oyetola’s claims based on allegations of excessive voting made utilising the BVAS devices.
Onyechi Ikpeazu, the lead attorney for the second respondent Ademola Adeleke, observed in his argument that none of the criteria permitted by the Electoral Act to establish overvoting produced such proof.
“The petitioner did not bring any document in prove of forgery and no witness from the institution to disown the documents that were allegedly forged,” he said.
The matter of forgery of certificates, according to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) attorney Alex Izinyon, has been resolved.
