The National Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday nullified the election of Senator Dayo Adeyeye as the senator representing Ekiti South Senatorial District.
In a unanimous decision, the tribunal removed the All Progressives Congress candidate and declared former Minority Leader and the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Biodun Olujimi, winner of the poll.
Senator Olujimi had approached the tribunal following the declaration of Adeyeye by the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) in the February 23, 2019 Senatorial election.
She claimed that she scored the highest number of lawful votes cast during the keenly contested poll. In the alternative, she prayed the tribunal to outrightly nullify Adeyeye’s victory and order supplementary election accordingly in the district.
In her written address, the petitioner claimed that the election was not conducted in substantial compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Acts, having been allegedly fraught with all manners of irregularities, including over-voting, multiple thump printing, ballot snatching, ballot stuffing and improper ballot counting.
Senator Olujimi also accused the INEC of dereliction of duties, while stating that most of the documents used for the conduct of the election were not duly signed by agents.
In his defence, the respondents said INEC did what was right and constitutional by declaring the candidate of the APC the winner, having found to have got the highest number of lawful votes.
Delivering the judgement, the three-man tribunal, led by Justice D.D. Adeck, nullified elections in some polling units. Consequently, Olujimi polled a total of 54,894 to emerge victorious over the Senate Committee Chairman on Media and Publicity who polled 52,243.
Justice Adeck added that apart from the nullification in some units, the outcome of the tribunal’s verdict was predicated on the recount of the ballots by the contenders as granted by the court.
Justice Adeck said for the petitioner proved the cases of criminal allegations of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Acts and other corrupt practices raised in her petition beyond reasonable doubt.
On the voting patterns, the Tribunal said:” It is not tenable to say that a marked ballots were not properly deposited in the boxes because when this did not happen, then it will lead to over voting and will affect counting at every level of collation.
” To avoid this pitfall, those elections must be expunged in order not to vitiate the electoral process. Therefore, after those votes were deducted, PDP was left with 54, 894 while the respondent polled 52, 243.
“The petitioner having polled the highest number of lawful votes should be declared the winner of the election.
“We hereby declare the petitioner the winner and he is hereby returned elected.
“We hereby direct INEC to withdraw the certificate of return from the respondent and issue same to the petitioner,” he ruled.