Supreme Court affirms Adeleke’s election as Osun state governor

The Supreme Court has affirmed the election of Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State, bringing to an end the legal struggle of immediate past Governor Adegboyega Oyetola to reclaim the governorhip seat after the keenly contested 16 July 2022 election in the state.

Penpushing reports that the Tuesday judgement of a five-member panel upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal in Abuja which had earlier on 24 March affirmed Adeleke’s victory, and therefore sealed his victory over Oyetola.

The Supreme Court judgement has however, dashed Oyetola’s hopes of coming back to office after his momentary victory at the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal gave in January, 2023.

Penpushing further reports that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) it is recalled that had declared Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the winner of the election in an upset that deprived Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) a second term in office.

The then sitting Governor displeased with Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC’s) result, had approached the election petition tribunal in Osogbo to challenge the outcome of the poll, while the tribunal in its decision in January ruled in favour of Oyetola by declaring him the winner of the election, and sacking Adeleke who was just months in office.

Penpushing also reports that Governor Ademola  Adeleke, who remained in office to exhaust his right of appeal, had appealed against the decision of the tribunal, which was successful, and while upholding Adeleke’s victory, the Court of Appeal in Abuja held that the tribunal was wrong in its conclusion that that the election in some parts of the state was marred by over-voting, the pivotal legal issue on which Oyetola built his case.

The court held that the burden of proving the allegations of over-voting lies squarely with the respondents ( Oyetola and the  All Progressives Congress, stressing that it was inconceivable to assume that the testimonies of the respondents’ witnesses had any probative value

Penpushing reports that the Court of Appeal noted that Oyetola and his party, All Progressives Congress (APC) did not tender the voter registers and Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS machines which captured data of eligible voters at the Osun state governorship election.

‘Though the 1st and 2nd respondents (Oyetola and APC) relied on BVAS reports obtained from INEC to prove over-voting, they did not, nonetheless, call petitioner’s witness 1 to speak to the reports, that is, Exhibits BVR reports from INEC’s back-end server’, the court.

‘In their pleadings,” Mr Oyetola and APC “alleged that the results recorded and transmitted directly from the polling units were not taken into account and therefore accredited voters recorded in Form EC8A from the disputed polling units do not tally with the number of BVAS for the same polling units. Strangely, the tribunal, in its judgment, only relied on the table set out in an address of counsel to hold that over voting occured in an election’,  Court of Appeal said.

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