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The Supreme Court of Nigeria in its verdict on Tuesday, declared Ademola Adeleke as the Governor of Osun State.
The Independent National Electoral Commission had declared that Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party polled 403,371 votes, to defeat then-incumbent governor Adegboyega Oyetola, of the All Progressives Congress, who got 375,027 votes.
But Oyetola and the APC rejected the result of the poll and headed for the tribunal.
The governorship election in the state was held on July 16, 2022.
In its January 27, 2023 majority verdict, the Justice Tertse Kume-led tribunal annulled Adeleke’s victory and declared Oyetola the winner of the poll.
In the lead judgment prepared and delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, a member of the five-man panel that presided over the case, the court held that the appellants, Mr Oyetola and the All Progressives Congress (APC), did not produce a concrete evidence to support their claims of over voting and improper accreditation of voters.
Agim held that the evidence submitted by the appellant which did not include the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines of the 744 poling units in dispute, could not be relied upon as the primary source of records for the accredited voters in the polling units.
Failing to provide the authentic voter accreditation records from the BVAS implied that the appellants relied on a secondary, insufficient and inadmissible means to prove their allegations.
The court also ruled that the expert analysis presented by the APC and Mr Oyetola was not independent as the expert in question was a member of the APC and an associate of Mr Oyetola who had a vested interest in his analysis, affirming that the appellant failed to prove grounds of their petition.
“The appellant case clearly collapsed at the conclusion of evidence,” Mr Agim said.
Mr Oyetola had sought relief at the apex court following the Appeal Court’s upturning of his victory at the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal which affirmed Mr Adeleke as the validly elected governor.
