Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti
All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State weekend recorded landslide victories at the National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Ado-Ekiti, as the tribunal threw out three petitions filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against the three APC candidates in the February 23 National Assembly elections.
The PDP contestants: Hon. Kehinde Agboola, Mr. Nicolas Olusola Omotosho and Senator Duro Faseyi had filed petitions against Mr. Peter Owolabi, Mr. Ibrahim Olanrewaju and Mrs. Olubunmi Adetumbi of the APC over their Senatorial and House of Representatives poll victories respectively.
The three-man panel in a unanimous ruling read by its Chairman, Hon. Justice D. D. Adeck, dismissed the petition filed by Faseyi against winner of the Ekiti North Senatorial district (Adetumbi).
The panel, which comprised other judges like Justice C. N. Mbanu Nwenyi and Justice Khadi M. S. Abubakar, also dismissed the petitions by Agboola and Omotosho for the House of Representatives poll in Ekiti North 1 and II Federal Constituencies respectively, saying the petitions lacked merit.
Justice Adeck ruled that the petitioners came to the tribunal empty-handed and was bound to go home empty-handed and poorer.
The PDP and its candidates, through their counsel, Ahmed Raji SAN, had petitioned the APC, its candidates and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), claiming that APC had no candidates for Ekiti North Senatorial District, Ekiti North Federal Constituency I and II, where Adetumbi, Owolabi and Olanrewaju were declared winners respectively by INEC.
The petitioners claimed that there were no valid candidates for APC, since no primaries were held by the first respondent (APC) and the nomination of the second respondents (candidates) was null and void.
The plaintiffs also asked the court to declare that the votes accrued to the respondents were wasted votes and declared their candidates as winners of the elections.
But the lead counsel to the respondents, Chief Rafiu Balogun, in his defence, argued the claim by the petitioners that the APC did not conduct primaries amounted to hearsay, since the witness called by the petitioner testified that he only saw some protesters, alleging that there was no election.
He also argued that the purported INEC’s report on APC primaries had no value, stressing that the document told lies against itself, since it was signed a day before the official declaration of the results by the electoral umpire.
“We also argued that the tribunal lacks the loco standi to entertain the petition, since it is a pre-election matter and only the aspirant who participated in the primaries can challenge the process in line with Section 87 sub 1 of the Electoral Act 2010 as amended.
“And that the petitions were statue barred since they were not filed within 14 days after the primaries as stipulated by the law,” Balogun said.
