The Supreme Court of Nigeria has affirmed the election of Senator Ademola Adeleke as Governor of Osun State.
A five-man panel of justices affirmed Adeleke’s victory in a judgement delivered in Abuja on Tuesday, May 9.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the July 16, 2022 governorship election in Osun state with 403,371 votes against the 375,027 votes scored by then-incumbent governor Adegboyega Oyetola, of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Disgruntled with the result declared by INEC, Oyetola approached the gubernatorial election tribunal which upturned Adeleke’s victory and declared him (Oyetola) winner on January 27, 2023.
But Adeleke appealed the tribunal’s judgement at the Court of Appeal, which upturned the tribunal’s judgement and declared Adeleke winner, causing Oyetola to appeal to the Supreme Court.
In a lead judgement delivered by Justice Emmanuel Agim, the apex court ruled on Friday affirmed the Court of Appeal’s verdict in declaring Adeleke as the winner of the election.
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The Supreme Court held that though Oyetola alleged that Adeleke won through over-voting that occurred in 774 polling units in the state, he, however, failed to produce any Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), a machine that was used in any of the polling units to prove his allegation.
“It is glaring that the Appellant did not provide in evidence, any BVAS, but sought to prove over-voting by means of a report of examination of INEC’s database or backend server,” Justice Agim said.
According to the court, it was not in dispute that the BVAS contain a record of accredited voters (and) “it is, therefore, the only direct and primary record of voters accredited at polling units on election day”.
The court held that nothing in either Section 47 of the Electoral Act 2022 or Regulations 18- 23 of the INEC’s Regulations, made it mandatory for Presiding Officers in an election to transmit by BVAS, the number of accredited voters in each polling unit to the backend server.
It dismissed evidence of purported expert witnesses that testified in Oyeyola’s favour.
The apex court said it found no reason to set aside the verdict of the Court of Appeal which upheld Adeleke’s election victory.