Tribunal Grants Order To Adeleke Restraining INEC From Tampering With Osun Election Results

The Election Tribunal constituted to hear the petitions arising from the Osun State governorship election has granted an ex parte order to Senator Ademola Adeleke, restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission from altering election results as well as information contained in the card reader machines and other documents used for the poll.

The tribunal is led by Justice T.A. Igoche, which also has Justice P. A. Obayi as member, granted this order in Osogbo on Thursday during its sitting before the commencement of pre-hearing session.

Adeleke, who was the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party had, through his counsel, Mr. Nathaniel Oke (SAN), filed an ex parte application seeking leave of the tribunal to file the application before the pre-hearing session.

However, the applicant also sought leave of the tribunal to inspect and obtain certified true copies of electoral documents and materials in the custody of INEC; an order to conduct physical inspection and verification of electoral materials and machines, as well as used and unused ballots, among others.

Meanwhile, Adeleke also applied for an order to compel the INEC to produce and print out list of permanent voter card distribution statistics per polling units and an order restraining INEC from altering extracted information from card readers, election results from polling unit level to state level, as well as ballot papers used for the conduct of the governorship election in Osun State.

Adeleke predicated his application on the grounds that he was the candidate that contested the election held on September 22, 2018 and the re-run election held on September 27, 2018 on the platform of PDP.

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Other grounds of the application are: ” That the total votes won by the 1st applicant on the 22nd day of September, 2018 was 245,698 while the 1st respondent scored 245,345.

“That the 1st applicant was the winner of the election and ought to have been so declared by the 3rd respondent ( INEC). That the 3rd respondent declared the election inconclusive hence a rerun was conducted on the 27th day of September 2018.

” That the rerun election was marred by electoral violence, vote-buying, stuffing of ballot papers, multiple thumb-printing and voting and allocation of votes by the 3rd respondent. That by the total actual and valid votes cast on the 22nd and 27th days of September 2018 respectively, the elections were won by the applicants.