The Oyo State Election Petitions Tribunal this morning upheld the election of Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State in its ruling on the petition filed against his election by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) candidate, Senator Abiola Ajimobi.
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•Alao Akala.
n a split decision judgement, four members of the five-man tribunal ruled that Akala was validly elected and that the allegations raised by Chief Ajimobi to nullify the elections were not substantially proved by the petitioner.
However, there was palpable tension when a member of the tribunal, W. Bashiru, disagreed with the decision of the majority and nullified the election of Governor Alao-Akala.
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He called for a fresh election in the state because, as he reasoned, the governor did not win convincingly in Ogbomoso.
Reading the main judgement, the chairman of the tribunal, Justice Teni Yussuf Hassan, ruled that most of the allegations filed against Alao-Akala’s election by Senator Ajimobi did not attain the required standard of proof and therefore stand dismissed.
Justice Hassan held that since the petitioner failed to proved that Gov Akala was directly involved in thuggery, violence, snatching of ballot boxes and intimidation, grounds on which Senator Ajimobi was seeking cancellation, the election cannot be nullified because of the acts of others.
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On non compliance with the electoral act, the tribunal held that the petitioner failed woefully to prove that non compliance with electoral law substantially affected the outcome of the election.Before today’s verdict, revelations at the tribunal had observers speculating that the case would be in Ajimobi’s favour.
During one of the tribunal’s sitting in November last year, an INEC official had admitted that election results in three local governments in Ogbomoso area of the state were falsified.
•Ajimobi.
The Head, Operations, INEC, Mr. Olubunmi Ariyo, who was led in evidence by counsel to Ajimobi, Chief Adeniyi Akintola (SAN), had admitted that some results were either “rewritten, altered or cancelled” in Ogo Oluwa, Ogbomoso South, Ogbomoso North, and Ibarapa East.
The INEC official admitted that the results entered for the PDP candidate (Alao-Akala) in the affected local governments were altered on the result sheet.
The result recorded in the INEC forms were found to be different from those in the Certified True Copy (CTC).
Ajimobi, the ANPP candidate in the April 2007 elections, had petitioned the tribunal, asking that he should be declared winner of the election because, according to him, he won the majority of lawful votes.
His party, the ANPP had also petitioned Governor Alao-Akala that his victory was null and void, as he was not qualified to have stood for the April election in the first place.
The party alleged that Alao-Akala had been indicted by an administrative panel of inquiry set up by his former boss, Rashidi Ladoja.
The panel had reportedly found Alao-Akala guilty of misappropriating public funds, and that he was compulsorily retired from the Police Force after he failed to exonerate himself from an allegation of gross misconduct.
Apart from Ajumobi’s ANPP, candidates of three other opposition parties had also challenged the victory of the PDP at the April polls. They include Prof. Emmanuel Akinboade (DPA), Alhaji Mueez Akande (RPN), and Prince Ademola Ayoade (NDP).
The period, leading to the tribunal’s verdict today, had been attended by mudslinging by both the PDP and the opposition parties, with each side accusing each other of plotting to influence the tribunal’s final decision.
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Despite acknowledgments that the elections that gave victory to Alao Akala in the April 2007 elections were marred with rigging and irregularities, a five member panel of the Oyo State elections petition tribunal upheld the victory of Alao Akala as the duely elected governor of Oyo State.
The tribunal canceled over 100,000 votes in three local government areas. The decision was not unanimous and a dissenting member of the panel was still reading the minority judgement as at the time of filing this report.
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