The election petition tribunal’s decision to invalidate Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke’s victory in the July 16 governorship election has been appealed by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The commission listed 44 grounds for appeal in the Notice of Appeal dated January 30, 2023, submitted to the Court of Appeal, Akure Division, and obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday. The commission urged the court to overturn the Tribunal’s decision.
The petition filed by the All Progressives Congress and its candidate in the election, Adegboyega Oyetola, was also objected to by the appellant as being without substance.
In a ruling issued on January 27, 2023, a tribunal panel chaired by Justice Tertsea Kume pronounced Oyetola to have been legitimately elected governor in the polls and declared Adeleke’s victory to be invalid.
The panel took away the extra votes from Adeleke and Oyetola’s ballots after claiming that there was over-voting in 744 of the polling places.
But in a minority decision, Justice A. Ogbuli, another panelist, dismissed the APC’s challenge and maintained Adeleke’s election victory.
Additionally, in the Notice of Appeal signed by Prof. Paul Ananaba (SAN), counsel for INEC, and 17 other parties, the Commission contested the Tribunal’s ruling on the grounds that the panel had committed legal error by concluding that Adeleke did not receive the majority of valid votes. The Commission asserted that the petitioners had only called two witnesses who did not establish that the PDP candidate had lost the election.
The Tribunal’s use of a table from the petitioners’ final written argument to calculate overvoting and votes that were subtracted from the respondent’s totals, according to the INEC, was illegal.
The electoral authority denied the Tribunal’s assertion that its actions amounted to tampering with official records because it provided various accreditation reports.
It further stated that the claim that it interfered with official documents was a criminal claim that needed to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, noting that there was no evidence of such record-tampering before the panel.