The hope of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to thwart the election of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Osun state, Tuesday, finally crashed like a pack of badly arranged cards as Nigeria’s apex court said Sen. Ademola Adeleke was properly elected and returned as governor.
APC had gone to the Supreme Court to seek a reversal of Adeleke’s victory in its favour after both the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal had thrown out its challenge of the PDP victory.
While the Tribunal upheld the APC challenge, the Court of Appeal threw it out and reinstated Adeleke.
Delivering the judgment Tuesday. Justice Emmanuel Agim held that the Court of Appeal was correct in setting aside the decision of the Tribunal as there was no way Adegboyega Oyetola could depend on only the information on the back-end server and not look into the voters register, which forms a foundation of the electoral process in any polling unit.
The Apex court held that the respondents’ findings in the issues of BVAS were that there was overvoting in only six polling units which didn’t affect the emergence of Ademola Adeleke as the governor-elect.
While dismissing the appeal on Adeleke’s qualifications, the court held that Oyatola’s appeal collapsed for failure to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt as it was not enough to point out issues of certified documents without making findings to back up the claims.
