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The Court of Appeal
has deferred judgment on an appeal filed by Rauf Aregbesola, the
governorship aspirant of the Action Congress (AC) in the 2007 elections
in Osun State.

The five-member
panel, led by Justice Clara Ogunbiyi, said this after listening to the
arguments of counsel to the parties in the suit.

Mr. Aregbesola is
contending the judgment of the Governorship and House of Assembly
Elections Petitions Tribunal of Osun State of May 28, 2010. The
tribunal upheld the declaration of Olagunsoye Oyinlola of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) by the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) as the winner of the said election.

Arguing on behalf
of the petitioner, Akin Olujimi, a Senior Advocate, said his client is
faulting the lower tribunal judgment because it has failed to consider
the weight of evidence put before it before making its conclusions.

Mr. Olujimi made
specific reference to Boripe local government, where the number of
votes allotted to the PDP candidate were far much more than the total
number of names available in the voters’ register there.

He said whereas the
total number of the eligible voters, according to INEC’s voters’
register, is 12,631, the commission recorded 14, 497 for the PDP
candidate.

He also pointed out
that besides many discrepancies in the number of eligible voters in the
register and the number of votes recorded during the election, the
commission could only produce register for four wards, out of the 11
wards in the local government, “meaning that there are no register for
the remaining 7 wards in the council,” the counsel said.

Fairy tale

The petitioner
alleged that one F.O. Nafiu, a PDP agent, who signed exhibit 196 before
the court, signed nine out of the 11 documents containing the results
of the election in Boripe local government.

This, he argued, could not be possible under election pressure, given the distance between the wards.

He then submitted
that the tribunal had failed to consider all the irregularities, which,
according to him, were enough to make it void all votes from the
affected area and declare the candidate that pools the majority votes
in the remaining vote cast as the winner of the election.

Having argued his
point before the appeal panel, Mr. Olujimi urged it to set aside the
judgment of the lower tribunal, cancel the votes of areas in
contention, and declare his client winner of the election because with
the remaining votes, he scored the highest.

But, Yusuf Ali,
lead counsel to Governor Oyinlola, said the tribunal could not have
judged otherwise because the appellant failed to prove his allegations
of fraud beyond reasonable doubt.

He said most of the
issues which the case rested upon are criminal, and needed concrete
evidence to prove, which the appellant has failed to avail the court.

He said the appeal does not deserve any other action from the panel than a dismissal, urging the panel to do same.

After listening to the two and the counsel representing INEC, its
officials, as well as others representing other parties to the suit,
the appeal panel said it would communicate the judgement date to all
the parties in due course.