By Adedeji Adebayo Elder
On July 18, 2022, two days after a governorship election was conducted in Osun State, APC and Governor Adegboyega Oyetola applied for the Certified True Copies (CTC) of the BVAS Report for the election ( Note: The said election was conducted on the basis of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS).
After the statutory payments were made, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on July 29, 2022, 13 days after the election, issued the CTC of the BVAS Report to APC and Oyetola.
On August 10, 2022, APC and Oyetola served INEC their Petition challenging results in 749 polling units on the account of over-voting that they believed took place in those polling units.
Having discovered the palpable inconsistencies between figures recorded as accredited votes on the EC8A ( result sheet) and the BVAS Report, INEC, according to APC and Oyetola, mischievously tampered with the contents of the original BVAS report to protect the mandate it erroneously awarded to Ademola Adeleke and PDP by issuing a fresh CTC to the defendants, claiming the CTC earlier issued to APC and Oyetola was incomplete and unsynchronised. Recall the winner was declared on the basis of BVAS.
So APC and Oyetola asked: why did INEC declare a winner when its record was untidy and not yet synchronized?
They further asked: why did INEC, on 20th July, issue the Certificate of Return to the Candidate of PDP when BVAS report, upon which the election was declared conclusive, was unsynchronised?
Oyetola and APC, in their Reply to INEC’s Defence, averred that the claim of the electoral body, as to non-syncronisation of BVAS Report, is an afterthought to cover-up a shoddy job it ( INEC) did at the various polling units which led to the over-voting alleged in the controversial polling units.
The Petitioners, Oyetola and APC, are begging the Tribunal in their Petition to cancel the 173,655 votes in the disputed polling units because voters were not validly accredited as stipulated by the extant laws, and the Tribunal should declare them (Petitioners) as winners having obtained valid votes of 314,723 as against Adeleke/PDP votes of 290,213. Continue Reading
