The Ogun State All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the rejection by the People’s Democratic. Party (PDP) of the judgment of the Ogun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal delivered last Saturday, as the “ranting of incompetent sore losers”.
In a press statement by the APC, released to media men on Tuesday and signed by the Ogun State APC’s publicity secretary, Tunde Oladunjoye, the party asked PDP and its “fugitive governorship candidate”, Ladi Adebutu, “to cover their faces in shame if they have any modicum of shame left in them”.
The APC statement reads in part:
“We noticed that it took the PDP about four days after the meticulous judgment of the Tribunal that lasted 11 hours, twenty five minutes, before the party could make a feeble, wishy-washy, reaction to the sound judgment of the Tribunal
“The delayed reaction of the ramshackle party was obviously as a result of serious shame the verdict put the party and its defeated candidate to; as their lordships, section by section, dissected and exposed the incompetence of the petition and the shaky grounds that the petition were premised on.
“It is laughable that the PDP agreed that its petition was very faulty in presentation and procedures but complained that the decision of the Tribunal was based “solely on procedural technicalities”. The conduct of elections, announcement of results and procedures for petitions are not and cannot be based on the whims and caprices of anyone, no matter how fraudulently rich, but on the rules and regulations enunciated in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) and also in the Electoral Act 2022. Any party that can not keep to the laws of the land is not deserving of victory at the Tribunal, let alone governing a dynamic state like Ogun state, the gateway of many firsts in Nigeria
“Pray, what was the PDP expecting from the Tribunal judges? That the judges should ignore the fact that the PDP filed the statement of its so-called “expert witness” out of time? That, against the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022, the PDP lumped its grounds petition together instead of separating them? The PDP told the Tribunal that 49,000 people “were disenfranchised” but did not call even one of them to testify. Was the party expecting the Judges to help them go out of the court at Isabo and probably go to Kuto market or Oyingbo market to go and look for the so-called “disenfranchised voters” for them?
“The desperate PDP brought a man touted as “expert” to the Tribunal. The “expert” neither showcased his qualifications nor his cognate experience. He did not even present a single ballot paper. All the documents he submitted to the Tribunal were not authored by him, and neither did he have the copyright to them. “Expert” indeed!
A video was dumped on the Tribunal by the petitioners, and they did not speak to the video throughout the proceedings. The petitioners were not producers of the video, which was even presented in a language not acceptable to the court! What a high level of incompetence!
“The boast of going to the Appeal Court by the failed party and its fugitive candidate is nothing but their usual empty boasts, which is merely aimed at the continued warehousing of the remnant of their gullible followers. It is a wild goose chase that will fetch them nothing but another unanimous defeat.
“It is an elementary stance in law that ‘you cannot put something on nothing’
The loser party should be told that election petition is not like gambling or pool betting, where players rely majorly on luck. Election petition is a serious and highly technical business that is not meant for gamblers.”
