Election Petition Tribunal On Osun Elections Adjourned Till February 5.
Investigations are ongoing over the cancellation of results in 17 polling units during the Osun State Governorship Elections which eventually produced Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressive Congress as the winner.
According to Adelodun Rasaki, the state collation agent for APC in the election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) cancelled results in 17 polling units due to inability to reconcile votes.
Rasaki said this yesterday while cross-examined by Adesina Agbede, counsel to INEC, before the election petition tribunal sitting in Abuja.
While testifying before the tribunal, the party state collation agent said some collation officers reported during collation of results from all the local governments that results from some polling units could not be reconciled.
Rasaki said all the party agents who signed the result sheet (Form EC8D) were present when the decision to cancel the results were taken.
“That led to the cancellation of the results of these polling units,” Rasaki said.
“That was at the point of aggregation of all results from the 30 local governments.
“The returning officer of the state also disclosed that the number of registered voters in these units exceeded the margin between the first petitioner (Senator Ademola Adeleke) and the second respondent (Gov. Gboyega Oyetola).
“The margin showed that the difference is small compared with the number of registered voters and that they cannot be disenfranchised.”
When Rasaki was probed by Lasun Sanusi, counsel to the APC, he said he and other APC polling unit agents discovered discrepancies in some of the Forms EC8A brought to him as the state collation agent of the party.
Rasaki informed Onyechi Ikpeazu, counsel to the petitioners, that he was not present at the collation centres in the local governments and as such he cannot tell of who corrected the Forms EC8A, B and C.
“Only the local government officers were allowed. Polling unit agents of parties were not present when the decision to cancel the result of seven polling units was made,” he said.
Naija News reports that Ademola Adeleke, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had approached the tribunal to challenge the declaration of Gboyega Oyetola, candidate of the APC, as the winner of the keenly contested September 22 and 27 elections.
The tribunal adjourned its sitting to February 5.
source https://www.naijanews.com/2019/02/02/inec-investigates-why-results-of-17-polling-units-were-cancelled/
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