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With a 26 paragraph affirmation sworn to by a female governorship candidate of National Rescue Movement NRM, Jumoke Lawoyin who is contesting her unlawful exclusion from the September 22 election in Osun State, there appears to be a new twist in the ongoing trial at the Election tribunal to where the Peoples Democratic Party PDP had dragged both Independent National Electoral Commission INEC and the All Progressive Congress APC.
Looking at her petition “No :EPT /OS/GOV/02/2018″with the eye of a Yoruba proverb, the case can be likened to the view of a third party holding strongly that neither the civet cat nor the black ant is innocent in a raging controversy in which both of them (civet cat and the black ant) are slugging it out and wondering over who has emitted offensive electoral odour.
So goes the proverb:” Akata ndifa, ikamundun ndibo, A ni “kini nrun bayi? Ara ta lomo ninu gbogbo won? “
“The civet cat is consulting the Oracle :The large black ants are voting among themselves, yet one asks the other :”what is emitting such electoral odour? Which of them is innocent and clean in body, anyway? “this seems to be the poser on which NRM is premising its challenges.
Already the Chairman of the Election Tribunal, Justice MI Sirajo has given nod to Jumoke Lawoyin’s four point exparte motion to file her application, preparatory to hearing her case proper.
Her request that INEC should produce all the election materials and documents for forensic investigation has been granted, so also her demand that the commission and the APC be served orders of the court through the tribunal’s notice board.
The petition filed through an Abuja based cerebral and constitutional lawyer, Dr Kayode Ajulo, and accepted, will at the commencement of the trial contend that her exclusion from the governorship election has rendered the entire September 22 election and its attendant re-run a futile exercise while calling for its cancellation and the organisation of a fresh one.
In the affidavit sworn to by Lawoyin who is contending that the elections were riddled by corrupt practices, the NRM candidate is challenging the emergence of Gboyega Oyetola APC as winner of the election, arguing that he would not have been elected if her own supporters were not disenfranchised by the electoral process which failed to include her party’s symbol on the ballot papers even after she had spent monies on campaigns preceeding the election.
In her prayers, Jumoke Lawoyin explained that all spirited efforts made to INEC through an Abuja Federal high court to mandate the commission to include her name in INEC approved list were unavailing as the court could not hear the matter before the date of the election.
