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… Detailed Account Of The Poll Case SDP’s Candidate Claimed To Have Won
I have watched and listened with disgust the mindless distortion of facts of the tribunal judgement on the 2007 poll case by Asiwaju Segun Oni in the electoral contest between him and Governor Kayode Fayemi.
Oni had at several fora sought to discredit the courts and their judges by saying that ACN leaders bought the judgement that sacked him as Governor in 2010, claiming that he lost to “red biro” in Ifaki polling units. By this he was always denigrating the courts and the judges that they were bought by ACN leaders, to the point of accusing Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and others of exchanging MTN text messages and calls with Justice Ayo Salami of the Appeal Court, Ilorin, to manipulate the court case in Fayemi’s favour.
The justices of the Appeal Court denied the allegation at the NJC. MTN also denied that the calls log was from its base station. But the NJC went ahead to institute a probe panel to know the truth of the matter. At the end, it was discovered that the calls log that was relied upon by Oni to accuse the judges of favouring Fayemi was the handiwork of 419 syndicates who cloned MTN calls log to allegedly cream off millions of naira from a desperate Oni who wanted to be governor at all costs without winning any election. The 419 gang reportedly smiled to the bank after having their last jokes on their victim.
Today, Oni is still claiming that because a red biro was used in Ifaki-Ekiti to mark voter register instead of the approved blue biro, he lost at the Court of Appeal to Fayemi. This much he repeated again on Channel Television yesterday, and I now think it is time to go back to history to put the records straight to end this inanity.
I believe it is necessary to put the records straight against the backdrop of Oni’s shenanigans to continue misleading the public and the world in general for undeserved sympathies in a case that was a clear evidence of a compromised judiciary dispensing injustice to return Oni at all costs as the governor of Ekiti State after losing 2007 poll.
I shall begin by asking whether it is lawful for a judge to assist in providing evidence to help a party in dispute before him. This question arises because in the rerun petition before Justice Hamma Barka, he had before him an exhibit marked 169, a crime report extract prepared by the police, which clearly stated that “unknown persons” burnt the INEC office at Ido-Ekiti. PDP and Oni did not prove otherwise during cross-examination at trial. Instead of destroying AC’s claim denying the burning of INEC office, Erinmoje (the PDP supporter who turned witness for AC) came to tell the court that he was one of those that led PDP boys suborned with 10 litres of petrol by PDP leaders to burn the building but to falsely blame it on AC.
The respondents’ counsel did not cross-examine him to disprove his allegation, but Barka in his judgment said he was convinced that AC agents burnt INEC office, and that Erinmoje’s statement was an “after-thought”.
Before the declaration of the result, the state Resident Electoral Commissioner for Ekiti State, Mrs Adebayo Ayoka, had resigned her appointment because of what she described as unhealthy situation during the re-run election. In her resignation letter to the Presidency, she wrote: “It is with heavy heart that I am writing to inform you of my resignation as the resident electoral commissioner for Ekiti State. In accordance with the rule of law, the on-going election in Ekiti State was supposed to be the election that will enhance the image of INEC, electoral process in our dear country Nigeria and the whole black race. Unfortunately, the circumstances changed in the middle of the process, therefore, my conscience as a Christian cannot allow me to further participate in this process.” This is the content of Mrs. Ayoka’s resignation letter to the Presidency.
In a swift reaction, the Presidency rejected the resignation letter and in response, the then Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, threatened to declare her wanted on account of her failure to report in Abuja to defend the allegations in her resignation letter.
With this scenario, the whole world was quite aware that the whole re-run election in Ekiti State was a big shame to the ruling party (PDP), the nation Nigeria and the whole of African nations.
But after threats to Ayoka’s life, she resurfaced to announce the results she had earlier rejected, declaring Oni as the winner.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Barka said he was convinced that Madam Ayoka Adebayo NEVER resigned, saying the purported resignation was merely the “assertion of the petitioners”, even though the certified true copy (CTC) of Ayoka’s resignation letter to the Presidency was an exhibit before the tribunal.
Ayoka never came to the tribunal hearing to deny her resignation letter. Besides, in a world press conference addressed by the then INEC Chairman, Maurice Iwu; Information Minister, Dora Akunyili and former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, they urged Ayoka to come out of her hiding to substantiate the allegations in her resignation letter. If the Federal Government acknowledged that Ayoka actually resigned and was wanted to substantiate allegations in that resignation letter, where did Barka draw his conclusion that Ayoka NEVER wrote a letter or NEVER resigned?
Justice Barka said in his judgment that there was no proof that the PDP thugs had agency relationship with Segun Oni. These thugs, according AC witnesses, chased supporters of AC at Ifaki and other towns, and beat up election observers like Dr. Abubakar Momoh. Almost every member of AC that was disallowed to vote said Ijakoko and Erinmoje (now in APC) were allegedly the leaders of the thugs. Erinmoje himself swore to a court affidavit, stormed the tribunal and said all allegations of violence against him were true; that he was commissioned to carry out attacks on opponents by the governor (Segun Oni), just to ensure that Oni wins.
At the tribunal hearing, Erinmoje showed his Government House ID card, a walkie-talkie configured to the base station in the Government House et.c. Later, the late Bunmi Ojo, Oni’s PA, confirmed to the court that Erinmoje was one of Segun Oni’s arch supporters, thereby confirming there was mutual relationship and agency between Oni and Erinmoje. But in his judgment, the judge came to Oni’s rescue, saying that Oni had no relationship with Erinmoje. Can this hold in law?
The fresh judgments by the Appeal Courts and tribunals at that time insisted that anyone who purports to have won election has the burden to prove that he actually won that election, but this did not apply in Barka’s court. Old rule was that the petitioners must prove that the purported winner did not win any election. The new rule at the time of hearing the Fayemi/Oni matter was that winner must prove that he wins.
But in his ruling, Barka said the petitioners must prove that the winner never won any election. Was the rule on burden of proof on the respondent upturned by the Supreme Court a day before the judgment in rerun petition in Ekiti State?
Justice Barka in his judgement said that Segun Ajayi, an AC member in Ido- Ekiti, who had his leg amputated as a result of gunshots, did not show enough evidence to support his case that opponents of his party (PDP) carried out the attack on him. Pray, were AC supporters fighting one another that day that they now decided to shoot one of their members even though Erinmoje had made it clear in his evidence that PDP thugs, who he confessed he led, were at INEC office, Ido-Ekiti, “making trouble and shooting and were not arrested because the police knew it was the PDP boys” that were making trouble. It was during the shooting at INEC office that Ajayi was shot in the leg.
On this Erinmoje’s claim, PDP and Oni’s lawyers never cross-examined him to disprove his allegation, but the judge said in his judgement that Ajayi did not prove that PDP thugs shot him.
In another instance to assist PDP, the judge said allegation of using Enugu State result sheet Code 14 to record Ekiti rerun result only in Ido Osi was not proved even though the judge saw clearly before him that the code for Ekiti was 13 and not 14, which was Enugu’s code. He found it difficult to confirm from INEC which code was officially allocated to Ekiti and whether it was lawful to use illegal result sheet from other state for the election in Ekiti. He also said the use of the stamp not approved for Ekiti rerun was no offence. Is this lawful?
Electoral Act 2006, Section 46 subsection One says: “Each Political Party may by notice in writing addressed to the Electoral Officer of the Local Government/Area Council appoint a person (in this Act referred to as a “Polling Agent”) to attend at each polling unit in the Local Government/Area Council for which it has candidate and the notice shall set out the name and address of the polling agent and be given to the Electoral Officer at least 7 (Seven) days before the date fixed for the election.”
But against the stipulation of the Electoral Act 2006, during trial, it was discovered that PDP fielded appointed party agents of many political parties that had no candidates in the rerun election to be at polling units and they even came to the tribunal to be PDP witnesses during trial. Barka did not see anything wrong in a party that has no candidate for election to choose party agents to append their signatures on the documents on the election in which they have no candidates contesting. Was the rule changed before the judgment day?
Again, even though Justice Barka had before him an exhibit detailing requests by the petitioners (AC and Fayemi) to be provided with Voters Registers by INEC but INEC refused to provide the document, leading to this same judge warning INEC on several occasions to provide the register for the petitioner ( Fayemi). During judgment, this same judge conveniently forgot that he actually gave these orders warning INEC to provide the registers to the petitioners but that INEC deliberately refused to provide the petitioners with the register. In his judgment, this same Justice Barka now blamed Fayemi for not providing voter register to prove his case.
More bizarre is that the law is clear that it is the respondent who wants his election validated that must prove through records, including voter register, that he actually won the election. Without this register, he awarded victory to Oni. Was the rule changed before judgment day?
Does a document that has no author and signature have any evidential value? This question becomes pertinent because the whole world was shocked when the Electoral Officer for Ido Osi, Mr. Innocent Akao, openly in court disowned the result for Ifaki Ward Two where Oni voted and was ridiculously awarded a whopping 7,375 votes by INEC. And when this Electoral Officer was to be cross-examined in court on this same document, he lost his cool, and charged angrily, saying, “My Lords, I have told you I don’t know anything about this document; this is not the result I prepared for the Resident Electoral Commissioner.”
This was the same fake result that Ayoka rejected because her Electoral Officer, Innocent Akao, was not the author of the result. Besides, the fake result had no signature. The document had no author. Nobody signed it, including Akao, PDP and AC agents, yet the judge approved it to give Oni 7,375 votes and Fayemi got ONLY TWO votes in Ifaki-Ekiti.
Fully aware of the bizarre 7,375 votes to-Two votes in favour of Oni over Fayemi in Ifaki Wards I and II, yet Barka saw nothing strange in the voters who came to court to give evidence that they were not allowed to vote in Ifaki Ward One and Ifaki Ward Two. They showed their cards, which were neither stamped nor perforated to indicate that they actually voted. Barka brushed this clear evidence aside to believe that all persons in Ifaki MUST vote for a single candidate, even though he had earlier said that all the parties in the election had agents, who of course must be interested in fairness for their parties. Barka ignored this simple logic and held that all the agents of AC in Ifaki are ‘Judases’ who ‘must’ have (in effect) betrayed their candidate (Fayemi) by not voting for him.
In law, I understand that there is a law of the scale of probability that comes handy when a complex issue that defies logic crops up. Oni and some INEC supervisors had told the tribunal that it took two minutes for a voter to cast his vote. If this were so, how many voters can vote in one hour? Definitely, they must be 30 voters that can vote in one hour. Which means that within the SIX HOURS voting period allowed by law, just ONLY 180 voters can cast their votes on election day. That is, 30×6, which is 180 voters. Pray, where did Barka draw his logic that as many as 470 voters could vote in six hours in Ifaki when it would take two minutes for a voter to cast his vote and ONLY 180 people can vote in SIX HOURS? Absurd, absurd, Absurd! Yet, the magic votes were awarded to Oni.
Coincidentally, it was at this time that there were media reports of allegation of a bribe money on Ekiti Tribunal case allegedly traced to one of the Nigeria’s new generation banks in Togo and Ghana branches.
Later, another story of how the five judges in Ekiti Tribunal were allegedly invited by the Nigerian Judicial Council (NJC) to come and explain how they got two dissenting judgments in the lower election petition tribunal broke in the media. According to media reports, Mr. Justices Abiodun Adebara and Obande Ogbuinya at the NJC probe panel insisted that they wrote in long hand JUST ONE unanimous judgment in favour of Fayemi. Another typed judgment signed by three judges returned Oni as the winner, but Adebara and Ogbuinya reportedly refused to sign the judgment and so distanced themselves from the typed judgment by these three judges that gave victory to Oni, insisting that there was ONLY ONE UNANIMOUS judgement written in long hand by the five judges giving the judgment in favour of Fayemi.
Adebara in particular allegedly confronted one of the three judges in NJC secret panel, reportedly asking in anger: “Is this not your handwriting?” The man was reportedly shaking like a jelly fish, while the two other judges were speechless where they sat.
The handling of election cases in courts at that time in the political history of Nigeria showed clearly that the judiciary was significant in the sustenance or otherwise of our electoral process. The cases of Osun, Edo and Ekiti states were enough grounds to buttress this point. For instance, a lawyer to the then sacked Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun State, Mr. Kunle Kalejaiye, was found guilty of unethical conduct by NBA for exchanging text messages with the trial judge, Mr Justice Naron, during court proceedings in his client’s case in order to subvert justice. Some of the cases handled by this same judge were quashed by the Court of Appeal, including Rauf Aregbesola’s case. Aregbesola was declared the governor of Osun State on November 26, 2010 by the Appeal Court after the initial travesty of justice by fraudulent judicial officers in PDP’s pocket.
The same subversion of justice happened in Ekiti State where glaring and incontrovertible evidence of the witnesses of both the appellants and respondents were jettisoned by the three trial judges in favour of the respondents (PDP and Oni) only for the Court of Appeal to overturn the verdict in Dr Fayemi’s favour by upholding minority judgment by Adebara and Ogbuinya.
But this was not before Nigerians cried on the rooftops against corruption in the tribunals which had become bazaars for extortions while individual corrupt senior jurists had built judgment warehouses in their private homes where judgments were sold at cut-throat prices.
A well-publicised case, which resulted in the dismissal of two election petitions judges – Justice Opone and Adeniji, is relevant here. In this case, a non-candidate in an election ended up being declared by INEC as the winner of a senatorial seat and the two judges were confirmed to have received bribes to subvert justice and keep Ugochukwu Uba wrongfully in a Senate seat in Anambra State.
Indeed, what actually amplified corruption allegations in the judiciary could be located in this Uba’s case, and since then, several others followed, giving impression that the judiciary itself had become a cog in the wheel of the growth of democracy.
With these aberrations and strident calls to save the judiciary, an attempt was made by the Federal Government in its constitution review effort to establish a mechanism for reform in the judiciary. Former Chief Justice Lawal Uwais was appointed to head the Judicial Review Committee to save the judiciary. At the end of the exercise, the findings of the Uwais committee report only found their way to the dustbin.
Fayemi took his case to the Appeal Court again. By this time, the judiciary was on trial. Ekiti election tribunal brouhaha had developed a life of its own in the judiciary, only that it was faced with only one life; the life of perdition that needed mending by men of conscience. And so the new Court of Appeal President, Justice Ayo Salami, reputed to be an upright jurist, had a historical assignment in both his hands and laps and responded to the strident calls by Nigerians to save the Judiciary.
In his judgement on October 15, 2010, he upheld the minority judgment by Adebara and Ogbuinya, declaring Fayemi the winner of both 2007 and 2009 rerun polls in a judgement described as scholarly by erudite jurists and eminent lawyers.
At the lower tribunal in Oni/Fayemi case, embarrassing pieces of evidence marvelled the world to no end. For instances, we had incontrovertible evidence of votes exceeding the accredited voters; one document having different particulars on its duplicate; avalanche of unsigned documents; irregular signatures; and one document having different figures and signatures on their photocopies, all accepted by the three judges in Oni’s favour in their majority judgement. Minority judgment by Adebara and Ogbuinya rejected them. Yet this is the election that Oni is still claiming to have won.
During tribunal hearings also, the name Segun Oni was discovered to have allegedly registered as a voter in several places. For instance, in open court, it was shown that the name Segun Oni was registered in two places. In one place, Segun Oni was registered as an artisan aged 21 while in another place, another Segun Oni was registered as an engineer.
The majority judgement overlooked all these frauds in Oni’s favour, but the minority judgement scoffed at them, giving judgement in Fayemi’s favour.
Despite all these revelations, several years after and acting with the same mindset of a man desperate for power, Oni has again started claiming that he lost 2007 and 2009 rerun polls to the use of red biro and not to the criminal breach of the laws of the country, probably because he sees Ekiti people as having short memories and so the resort to the distortion of facts of history.
Pity that we have been playing politics with the Nigerian Law by calling Asiwaju Segun Oni a former Governor. In saner societies where the law works, it is either Asiwaju Segun Oni is in jail now or that he has served out his time in jail over illegal seizure of power after fraudulently denying a lawful winner of an election for three and half years to take over power.
On his allegation that APC bought votes for her June 18 victory, I shudder to wonder whether the party of this accuser is not even a worse offender. And I ask: how much were delegates paid by his agents during the PDP Congress where he failed to emerge as PDP governorship candidate before defecting to SDP? In the June 18, 2022 governorship poll, in good conscience, who ordered N3,000 pay-out to voters to vote for SDP?
Instead of making provocative statements in the media, againt my earlier counsel to a mutual friend who is one of his handlers, I advise Asiwaju Oni to go to the tribunal to go and waste his money on an allegation of vote buying that cannot be proved in law instead of resorting to the old tricks to buy undeserved sympathy, rubbish the judiciary and paint Fayemi as usurper of his (Oni) mandate.
