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The Election Petitions Tribunal hearing matters arising from Osun State governorship election of August 9, 2014 is set to deliver its final judgment on Friday, February 6, 2014.
The Secretary of the Tribunal, Mr. Adamu Aliyu, confirmed the date on the telephone to our correspondent in Osogbo on Wednesday.
He said, “The judgement is coming up on Friday, February 6, 2014″
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Iyiola Omisore, had dragged Governor Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress to the tribunal.
The Chairman of the panel, Justice Elizabeth Ikpejime, had on January 23, during the adoption of written addresses by all parties, adjourned indefinitely for the final judgment.
Omisore, the PDP candidate who came second during the poll with 292,747 votes against Aregbesola’s 394,684 votes prayed the tribunal to sack the incumbent governor and declare him the winner of the election.
Omisore’s counsel, Dr. Alex Izinyon ( SAN), had told the tribunal during the address stage that Aregbesola admitted that he scored 234,971 votes and not the the number of votes credited to him by the INEC in his final address.
Chief Akin Olujinmi ( SAN), who represented the first respondent explained that Aregbesola did not admit that he did not score up to the number of votes credited to him.
He stated that what the table meant was that “assuming with out conceding, the tribunal cancels the result in the disputed units, the first respondent would still have won with the new figure.”
He argued that the petitioner failed to prove his petition.
The counsel referred to the objection of the first respondent to the petition filed at the hearing stage, saying he adopted the two applications filed to challenge the competence of the petition.
Based on this, the first respondent urged the panel to strike out the petition.
The counsel argued that the petitioner dumped the ballot papers used for the election and other electoral materials on the tribunal without demonstrating to the panel how they related to the case.
He further stated that the duplicate copies of form EC8A tendered by the petitioner were inadmissible, adding that those who tendered them were not the makers of the documents.
