The Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, has opened his defence at the state Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.
The governor on Friday opened his defence after both the Peoples Democratic Party and the Independent National Electoral Commission had closed their cases in the petition filed by the PDP candidate, Ladi Adebutu, PUNCH reports.
The governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Ogun State, Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu, had tendered 8,000 documents as exhibits against the election victory of Prince Dapo Abiodun in the March 18 election.
Adebutu had approached the Tribunal with a petition marked EPT/OG/GOV/03/2023 to challenge Abiodun’s victory at the polls.
He alleged that the election that brought Abiodun back into office was not in compliance with the Electoral Act and other corrupt practices perpetrated during the election.
Adebutu’s counsel, Goddy Uche SAN. urged the tribunal to admit the documents as evidence against Abiodun.
He informed the Tribunal that he had served the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Abiodun and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the first, second, and third respondents a 98-page schedule of documents, listing all the documents to be tendered before the court.
Uche said the exhibits included INEC forms; BVAS reports; forms ECAs; voters’ registers and printed IREV results while praying the court to allow him to call his witnesses for the commencement of the trial.
However, counsel to INEC, Peter Olatunbora, urged the Court not to admit the documents as exhibits, submitting that the petitioners should have availed the respondents of the documents before presenting them before the court.
It was the same submission by Counsel to Abiodun, Kehinde Ogunwunmiju (SAN), who prayed the court not to admit the documents as evidence, arguing that the petitioner did not follow the laid-down procedure for presenting documents before the court.
He prayed the court gives the respondents three days to allow them to inspect the documents before admitting them as evidence.
While Adebutu closed his case after calling 94 witnesses and tendered over 200,000 documents as evidence, INEC closed its case without calling any witness.
However, on Friday, when the tribunal resumed sitting, Abiodun through its counsel, Prof Taiwo Osipitan, SAN, opened his defence in the petition.
Abiodun called his first witness, Jimoh Gbadebo, who admitted disrupting elections in seven out of 14 polling units in Ward 6, Sagamu, Sagamu Local Government Area of the state.
According to Gbadebo, who is the Ward Collation Agent for APC, the affected polling units were Units 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11 and 12, all in Sagamu. While he explained that masked political thugs invaded the unit and disrupted the exercise by destroying the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, ballot boxes and papers about four hours into the election .
He added that the same group of thugs disrupted elections in the seven units by moving from one place to another.
Gbadebo told the tribunal that due to the disruption of the election, the INEC ward Collation Officer recorded zero for all the parties in the election.
He said, “I can’t recognise them (thugs). When they came, they were shouting ‘No BIVAS, No BIVAS’.”