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The Oyo State
governor, Adebayo Alao-Akala, and his other colleagues fielded as
candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had their day at the
Appeal Court in Ibadan on Tuesday as two rulings of the court were made
in their favour.

The appellate court
threw out an application requesting a shorter timeframe within which
the involved parties could file their briefs. This would have allowed
an accelerated hearing of the suit against their emergence as the
party’s candidates for elections in Oyo.

Wole Oyelese, Lekan
Balogun, Azeem Gbolarumi and 34 others filed the suit to appeal against
the decision of Jonathan Sharkharo of the Federal High Court in Ibadan
to set aside his earlier interim order restraining the Independent
National Electoral Commission and the PDP from recognizing Mr
Alao-Akala and others as the party’s candidates.

Also the court
granted the prayers of Lateef Fagbemi, lawyer to Dejo Afolabi, the
state PDP chairman, for the amendment of the records of proceeding and
permission to allow the use of documents brought by him as complements
to the record of the Federal Court, in order to adequately guide the
appellate court in its proceedings.

Mr Fagbemi had, at
the last sitting, sought the relief of the court to allow him to
include exhibits B and C, which comprise his jottings and newspaper
cuttings, respectively, on what transpired at the lower court, to
augment the ‘incomplete’ record from the lower court.

New records acceptable

The three-man
panel, comprising Stanley Alagoa, Sidi Bage and Modupe Fasanmi, ruled
that the additional records are important and would be helpful in the
course of the proceedings.

However, Mr Alagoa,
the presiding judge, refused to allow the inclusion of photocopies of
some national dailies as part of the court records, saying they were
neither certified as genuine copies nor the original versions of the
papers.

The court also
overruled an objection raised by Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN), lead
counsel to the aggrieved PDP member, that Mr Fagbemi should not have
been the one to file the application for amending the court’s records
since his client had withdrawn from the case at the lower court and has
been excused ever since. The court said the lawyer has the right to
present the additional record because he was a party to the original
suit.

“The applicants are challenging the completeness of the records of
the court. What he sought to be amending is simply an order to add
exhibits B and C and the leave is hereby granted to use exhibits B and
C as supplementary records,” Mr Alagoa said.